Figure 1.
Smoothed median BMI curves for the short (mean height SDS -1.6), normal (mean height SDS 0), and tall (mean height SDS +1.6) sample.
BMI according to chronological age for boys (A), girls (B) and BMI according to height-age for boys (C) and girls (D). The dotted lines and the shaded area represent the median BMI and confidence intervals of the tall sample and the short sample, respectively.
Figure 2.
Absolute deviation in median BMI-for-chronological-age and BMI-for-height-age between samples with tall or short stature from the sample with normal stature.
A smaller deviation indicates that the median BMI of short or tall sample is more similar to the median BMI of the sample with normal stature. For boys with a short stature in the ages 4 up to 14 years of age, expressing BMI according to height-age resulted in a smaller deviation from the BMI distribution of children with a normal stature than when expressing BMI to chronological age, whereas in boys with a tall stature this was true in the ages 4-16 years. In girls, expressing BMI to height-age resulted in a smaller deviation in the ages 2-10 years if of being short stature and in the ages 2-17 years when being tall.