background: the secular trend in growth is a well-documented and recurrent phenomenon in many developed and developing countries. in this study, we examined the secular trends in birth length and weight among iranian neonates. methods: this cross-sectional population-based survey was conducted between 1991 and 2011. using a two-stage stratified cluster sampling, the birth weights and heights of...

The authors give a sketch about the "Körmend Growth Study" which is series of cross-sectional growth studies, carried out in Körmend, a small town in Western Hungary. The first investigation was carried out in 1958 (K-58) and it has been repeated every ten years (K-68, K-78, K-88, and K-98). All 3-18 year-old healthy boys and girls in nurseries and schools in Körmend were involved in the study....

Strong evidence exists of a downward secular trend in the age at menarche; which appears to be associated with improved health and nutritional circumstances over the past two centuries. The aim of this study was to determine the mean age at menarche of Irish girls in 2006, as this has not been verified since 1986. A nationally representative sample of Irish girls (n = 4720, age 10-18 years) was...

BACKGROUND Evidence from a number of countries in Europe and North America point towards the secular declining trend in menarcheal age with considerable spatial variations over the past two centuries. Similar trends were reported in several developing countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America. However, data corroborating any secular trend in the menarcheal age of the Indian population remai...

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss a significant secular trend in stature and weight in an urban Brazilian population. METHODOLOGY Anthropometric measurements of 7878 children and adolescents from São Paulo, Brazil, obtained in 1997/98 were compared with data from a previous study carried out in 1978. Both samples include children of middle-class urban fami...

BACKGROUND Recent studies have shown that puberty starts at younger ages than previously. It has been hypothesized that the increasing prevalence of childhood obesity is contributing to this trend. The purpose of this study was to analyze the association between prepubertal body mass index (BMI) and pubertal timing, as assessed by age at onset of pubertal growth spurt (OGS) and at peak height v...

[1] We investigate the relationship between solar irradiance and cosmogenic isotope variations by simulating with a flux transport model the effect of solar activity on the Sun’s total and open magnetic flux. As the total amount of magnetic flux deposited in successive cycles increases, the polar fields build up, producing a secular increase in the open flux that controls the interplanetary mag...