95% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Children and Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fped.2025.1563501
Head circumference percentiles in Indian children with Down syndrome
Provisionally accepted- Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, India
This study aims to construct age and gender specific growth percentiles for head circumference (HC) that could be used as a reference for Indian Down syndrome (DS) children. Over a span of 24 years, 2327 head circumference measurements were performed on 1125 (Male:752, Female:373) DS children karyotypically proven as cases of free trisomy 21, aged <1month to 10 years following standardized anthropometric technique following a mixed-longitudinal growth research design. A regular increase in mean head circumference of male and female DS children was noticed. DS boys possessed significantly larger HC than girls. Our study showed that 12.9% of Down syndrome cases had normal head circumference, 27.2% had small head and a majority 59.9% depicted microcephaly. Head circumference percentiles for Down syndrome boys and girls were constructed for ages <1 month to 10 years. There is a need to monitor growth of children with Down syndrome using population specific and specialized growth charts. The age and gender specific head circumference growth percentiles presented for Indian Down syndrome children may be used for growth monitoring and inter-population comparison.
Keywords: Percentiles, trisomy 21, Microcephaly, Small head, North-west India
Received: 20 Jan 2025; Accepted: 24 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kaur, Bhalla, Panigrahi, Kaur and Sudhera. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Harvinder Kaur, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, India
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.