A longitudinal study of 0- to 3-year-olds Colombian children’s craniofacial biometry

Objectives: Characterising 0-3-year-old children’s General growth (GG) and Craniofacial growth (CG) patterns by growth curves within an eco-geographic, socioeconomic, welfare and oral motor function setting for establishing pertinent relationships.
Methods: A prospective, non-probability sampling, longitudinal study (WHO inclusion and exclusion criteria) distributed 265 Colombian children living in Bogotá (116 girls, 149 boys) into 3 age groups G1 (0-12 months-old), G2 (12–24) and G3 (24–36), taking into account the stages of child development. Two groups of explained variables (2 general (length/height, weight) and 10 craniofacial ones (width, depth and height) were associated with 20 explanatory variables, measured every 3 months throughout one year using calibrated anthropometric instruments. Parents gave their written informed consent and institutional ethical approval was obtained. Over data of explained and explanatory variables were performed descriptive and exploratory statistical analysis, of clustering, classification and correlation. Systematic and random error was calculated and mixed longitudinal models (MLM) were used for constructing growth curves and classification and regression trees (CART) for associating explained and explanatory variables (95% confidence interval; R, version 2.15.1, free statistics software; SAS 9.1).

Results: The results showed no statistically significant difference between inter-and intra-examiner measurements. Six growth models were adjusted with MLM for each explained variable; growth patterns gave a greater growth slope from 0-12 months and identified variability by age- and gender-groups. CART gave functional oral, eco-geographic, welfare and socioeconomic hierarchical categories of GG- and CG-associated variables, distributed into 3 new groups G1 (0-6 months-old), G2 (6-24), G3 (24-36). Breastfeeding (BF), BF time and the department where the grandparents were born best explained the 3 age-groups’ General growth (GG) and Craniofacial growth (CG).
Conclusions: The aforementioned methodology led to understanding infant GG and CG patterns and revealed associations between multiple variables, aiding a novel, useful diagnosis-related definition of infant growth pattern.