BackgroundThe World Health Organization recommends that human growth should be monitored with the use of international standards. However, in obstetric practice, we continue to monitor fetal growth using numerous local charts or equations that are based on different populations for each body structure. Consistent with World Health Organization recommendations, the INTERGROWTH-21st Project has produced the first set of international standards to date pregnancies; to monitor fetal growth, estimated fetal weight, Doppler measures, and brain structures; to measure uterine growth, maternal nutrition, newborn infant size, and body composition; and to assess the postnatal growth of preterm babies. All these standards are based on the same healthy pregnancy cohort. Recognizing the importance of demonstrating that, postnatally, this cohort still adhered to the World Health Organization prescriptive approach, we followed their growth and development to the key milestone of 2 years of age.ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to determine whether the babies in the INTERGROWTH-21st Project maintained optimal growth and development in childhood.Study DesignIn the Infant Follow-up Study of the INTERGROWTH-21st Project, we evaluated postnatal growth, nutrition, morbidity, and motor development up to 2 years of age in the children who contributed data to the construction of the international fetal growth, newborn infant size and body composition at birth, and preterm postnatal growth standards. Clinical care, feeding practices, anthropometric measures, and assessment of morbidity were standardized across study sites and documented at 1 and 2 years of age. Weight, length, and head circumference age- and sex-specific z-scores and percentiles and motor development milestones were estimated with the use of the World Health Organization Child Growth Standards and World Health Organization milestone distributions, respectively. For the preterm infants, corrected age was used. Variance components analysis was used to estimate the percentage variability among individuals within a study site compared with that among study sites.ResultsThere were 3711 eligible singleton live births; 3042 children (82%) were evaluated at 2 years of age. There were no substantive differences between the included group and the lost-to-follow up group. Infant mortality rate was 3 per 1000; neonatal mortality rate was 1.6 per 1000. At the 2-year visit, the children included in the INTERGROWTH-21st Fetal Growth Standards were at the 49th percentile for length, 50th percentile for head circumference, and 58th percentile for weight of the World Health Organization Child Growth Standards. Similar results were seen for the preterm subgroup that was included in the INTERGROWTH-21st Preterm Postnatal Growth Standards. The cohort overlapped between the 3rd and 97th percentiles of the World Health Organization motor development milestones. We estimated that the variance among study sites explains only 5.5% of the total variability in the length of the children between...

Some aspects of the dietary habits of smokers and non-smokers have been compared in a random sample of 9003 British adults. Comparisons were made of those consuming breakfast with those not taking breakfast, of those usually eating 'brown' with those usually eating white bread, of those 'frequently' with those 'infrequently' eating fresh fruit and of those 'frequently' with those 'infrequently' eating fried foods. Smokers were less likely to eat breakfast (p«iO.OOl), 'brown' bread (p

The effects of smoking deprivation and of smoking a single .8 mg, 1.3 mg or 2 mg nicotine yield cigarette, immediately post acquisition on a paired-associate learning task, were studied in 54 male smokers and 15 male nonsmokers. Subjects were retested for retention of the memorized material at intervals of one-half hour, one day, one week, and one month. Nonsmokers showed superior recall to all smokers at one-half-hour retest, and to some of the smoking groups on later re-tests. At one-month retest the low- and middle-nicotine cigarette smokers outperformed high-nicotine cigarette smokers. Low/middle-nicotine smokers achieved superior recall to nonsmokers at one-month retest. Results are discussed in terms of smoker versus nonsmoker differences, in terms of the effects of nicotine on memory consolidation, and in terms of the PAL response measure adopted.

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