Longitudinal Pattern and Reference Values of Obesity Indices of Infants in Jahrom (Southern Region of), Iran

Objective: obesity (scaled weight-by-height index) charts of a cohort of 597 healthy infants (391 boys and 206 girls) living in jahrom (southern iran) are presented.material & methods: an adjusted weight-for-height was used to develop power type obesity indices, ip=w/hp. polynomial modeling was used by applying hry (healy, rasbash, yang) nonparametric method to estimate age-related smoothed centiles of obesity.findings: the optimal value of p was found to be 2.5 for girls and 2 for boys. no more than cubic and quadratic polynomials were needed to fit obesity-for-age smoothly for infants. infant's obesity increases from birth to six months of age and decreases later on to the age of 20 months when it becomes stable.conclusion: using age-dependent obesity index (scaled weight by height) is an appropriate index which explores the degree of fatness. a local standard for assessing obesity in clinical practice as well as community health programs in iran is of urgent need; our data serve this purpose.