ArticleThe Lancet regional health. Europe2021
Head circumference from birth to five years in France: New national reference charts and comparison to WHO standards.
Article in The Lancet regional health. Europe, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Development, internal and external evaluation of an artificial intelligence algorithm for child growth monitoring in primary care.PLOS digital health · 2026Article
- New growth charts for children and adolescents in Catalonia, Spain: developed from routinely collected data (2013-2019).BMC public health · 2026Article
- Perinatal vulnerability: its impact on oral and craniofacial hard tissue development.Frontiers in physiology · 2026Review
- Human development, inequality, and their associations with brain structure across 29 countries.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2025Article
- Randomized controlled trial of 4.0 mg versus 0.4 mg folic acid supplementation: Follow-up of children at 1 year of age.European journal of obstetrics & gynecology and reproductive biology: X · 2025Article
- Investigating Development in Human Evolution: Specificities, Challenges, and Opportunities.Evolutionary anthropology · 2025Review
- New French height velocity growth charts: An innovative big-data approach based on routine measurements.Acta paediatrica (Oslo, Norway : 1992) · 2025Article
- Head circumference values among Inuit children in Nunavut, Canada: a retrospective cohort study.CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne · 2024Article
- Anthropometric indices growth references (length, Weight and Head Circumferences) of children aged 0-24 months in North-East of Iran by GAMLSS.BMC pediatrics · 2024Article
- Normal human craniofacial growth and development from 0 to 4 years.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- A comparison of intracranial volume estimation methods and their cross-sectional and longitudinal associations with age.Human brain mapping · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundThe monitoring of head circumference (HC) is essential to early detect any conditions affecting its growth in early childhood. A positive secular trend and regional specificities in HC suggested the need to provide updated national HC reference growth charts.
methodsWe extracted all growth data collected from 42 primary-care physicians from across the French metropolitan territory who used the same electronic medical-records software. We selected HC measurements up to age five years for all children who were born after 1990 with birth weight > 2500 g. We derived new HC growth charts by using Generalized Additive Models for Location, Scale and Shape, then externally validated them until 30 months of age by comparison with the national population-based
findingsWith 973,869 HC measurements from 157,762 children, new calibrated HC growth charts from birth to age five years were generated. The new HC growth charts showed good external fit by comparison with the ELFE birth cohort. As compared with the new HC growth charts, the previous French and WHO growth charts mean HC z-scores were, respectively, -0.4 and -0.6 SD for girls and -0.2 and -0.6 SD for boys.
interpretationWe produced and validated national calibrated HC growth charts by using a novel big-data approach applied to data routinely collected in clinical practice. Comparison with previous French and WHO growth charts confirmed a positive secular trend since the 1960s and regional specificities.
fundingThe French Ministry of Health; Laboratoires Guigoz-General Pediatrics section of the French Society of Pediatrics-Paediatric Epidemiological Research Group; the French Association of Ambulatory Pediatrics; and educational grant from the Regional Health Agency of Ile-de-France.
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