1 Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama and the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
This is a cross sectional study of the cortical thickness of the second metacarpal as judged from radiographs of the hand and wrist of 1,409 children under 7 years of age (691 boys and 718 girls) from a rural area of Guatemala. The data were compared with standards of United States children. All the films were read by the senior author. It was found that after reaching the age of 2 years the cortices of the boys were consistently thinner than those of the girls. Both sexes had age-specific mean values which were significantly lower than those of healthy U.S. children of the same age. However, the boys lagged further behind the U.S. standards than did the girls, and this difference in retardation between the sexes was significant.
Submitted on March 2, 1972
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