The seventh WHO Informal Consultation on Standards for Cytokines, Growth Factors and Endocrinological Substances was held at The National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) on 20-21 October 2003. Several issues relating to biological standardization and the establishment of new reference materials were discussed. In particular, recent regulatory requirements within the Europ...

OBJECTIVES The objectives of this study were to estimate the accuracy of using mid-upper-arm circumference (MUAC) measurements to diagnose severe wasting by comparing the new standards from the World Health Organization (WHO) with those from the US National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and to analyze the age independence of the MUAC cutoff values for both curves. METHODS We used cross-...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES This study attempts to compare the pattern of growth of Indian children as assessed by weight for age, height for age and BMI for age with the WHO standards for growth (2006) and to explore the implications of differences in undernutrition rates in the 0-59 months of age group as assessed by these three indices. METHODS From the National Family Health Survey-3 database...

OBJECTIVES The ability of the World Health Organization (WHO) growth standards to represent the growth of South East Asian infants has been questioned. The aim of this study was to provide contemporary data on the growth of Indonesian breast-fed and formula-fed infants, compared with the WHO growth standards. METHODS A prospective cohort study of 160 normal healthy infants was undertaken in a...

BACKGROUND In recent years, Health Technology Assessment (HTA) processes specific to diagnostics and prognostic tests have been created in response to the increased pressure on health systems to decide not only which tests should be used in practice but also the best way to proceed, clinically, from the information they provide. These technologies differ in the way value is accrued to the popul...