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Article Type

Letter to the Editor

Abstract

Sir,
I read with interest the study by El‑Gazzar et al. [1] published in January–March 2019 issue of the Journal of Medicine in Scientific Research. Based on using WHO growth standard to measure various anthropometric indices as well as dietary assessment (24 h recall) and food consumption pattern, the authors studied the relationship between dietary pattern and obesity among a cohort of Egyptian primary school children. They found a positive correlation between obesity and the increased intake of high‑energy dense food (fat and sugar) in the studied cohort. Owing to the presence of the following methodological limitation, I presume that these results ought to be interpreted cautiously. It is well known that in the clinical settings and research studies, there are many growth standards to measure anthropometric parameters in children, including WHO standard, Center for Disease Control standard, and country‑specific standard. Comparing the employment of other standards with that of the country‑specific standard disclosed that the latter could elucidate the growth of children more accurately [2]. Indeed, many population‑specific pediatric growth standards have been already formulated to be employed in the research studies and clinical fields [3,4]. To my knowledge, Egypt is among pioneer countries that have already constructed its own growth standard in 2002 to evaluate the growth of children [5]. I wonder why the authors referred to WHO standard rather than Egyptian standard in the study methodology. I presume that if national standard was employed, the results of the study might be more accurate.

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