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  • Letter to the Editor
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Mexican anthropometry percentiles and the LMS method

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 63, page 588 (2009)Cite this article

The article by Del-Rio-Navarro et al. (2007) provides percentiles of height, weight and body mass index (BMI) for Mexican youth aged 10–18 years, calculated by using a version of my LMS method. However, their description of the method is incomplete and misleading.

They describe their approach as a least-mean-squares (LMS) procedure similar to that of Kuczmarski et al. (2002). They say that ‘in the LMS technique, three parameters are estimated: the median (M), the generalized coefficient of variation (S) and the power in the Box–Cox transformation (L).’ In fact, the L-M-S they describe is the lambda-mu-sigma of my LMS method (Cole and Green, 1992), which they don't cite. They go on to fit it in two stages rather than one, while analysing the data in one-year age groups rather than using continuous age, an approach that leads to bias. They may be interested to know that free LMSChartMaker software exists, designed for non-statisticians, to fit the LMS method as originally described.

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References

  • Cole TJ, Bellizzi MC, Flegal KM, Dietz WH (2000). Establishing a standard definition for child overweight and obesity: international survey. BMJ 320, 1240–1243.

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  • Cole TJ, Green PJ (1992). Smoothing reference centile curves: the LMS method and penalized likelihood. Stat Med 11, 1305–1319.

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  • Del-Rio-Navarro BE, Velazquez-Monroy O, Santos-Preciado JI, Lara-Esqueda A, Berber A, Loredo-Abdala A et al. (2007). Mexican anthropometric percentiles for ages 10–18. Eur J Clin Nutr 61, 963–975.

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  • Kuczmarski RJ, Ogden CL, Guo SS, Grummer-Strawn LM, Flegal KM, Mei Z et al. (2002). 2000 CDC Growth Charts for the United States. Methods and Development. National Center for Health Statistics: Hyattsville, MD.

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  1. MRC Centre of Epidemiology for Child Health, UCL Institute of Child Health, London, UK. E-mail: tim.cole@ich.ucl.ac.uk,

    T J Cole

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Cole, T. Mexican anthropometry percentiles and the LMS method. Eur J Clin Nutr 63, 588 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejcn.1602925

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