Objective: To create gender and age-specific mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) growth centile curves for nourished Pakistani children and adolescents aged 2-18 years, as well as to define cut-points for assessing under and over-nutrition.
Methodology: This research was based on secondary data from a cross-sectional multi-ethnic anthropometric survey-2016. Age, gender, and MUAC measurement were extracted as variables from this data. The lambda-mu-sigma (LMS) approach was used to get the MUAC growth reference values and their related charts.
Results: In both sexes, the smoothed MUAC percentile curves rose with age. Between the age of 7 and 12, girls were shown to have higher values of percentiles than boys. When comparing the LMS, MUAC 50th percentile to references from 2007-WHO and corresponding data from other countries, it is clear that Pakistani children and adolescents have much lower MUAC percentiles than their counterparts in the reference group. Age-specific MUAC cut-offs defined for thinness (< -2SD) ranged between 12.18-18.10cm in boys and 12.24-18.08cm in girls, and for excess weight (> +1SD) were 14.49-24.11cm in boys and 14.60-25.23cm in girls.
Conclusion: The study results suggest that WHO data and MUAC reference data from other countries are not suitable as standards for the Pakistani pediatric population. The newly MUAC reference data and proposed cut-off values will be beneficial in a variety of situations as a nutritional evaluation tool.
Key words: Centile curves, cut- points, children and adolescents, mid-upper arm circumference, LMS method.
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