To fully analyze and compare BMI among Han, Tibetan, and Uygur university students, to discuss the differences in their physical properties and physical health, and thus to provide some theoretical suggestions for the improvement of students' physical health.
In this article, the authors propose reference curves for height and weight for school children in the Kuching area, Sarawak. The school children were from primary to secondary schools (aged 6.5 to 17 years old) and comprised both genders. Anthropometric measurements and demographic information for 3081 school-aged children were collected (1440 boys and 1641 girls). Fitted line plots and percentiles for height and weight (3rd, 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th, and 97th percentiles) were obtained. The height of school boys and school girls were almost similar at the start of their school-going age. For school girls, height and weight values stabilized when they reached 16 or 17 years old but kept increasing for school boys. School boys were taller than school girls as they entered adolescence. Height differences between school boys and school girls became significantly wider as they grew older. Chinese school children were taller and heavier than those of other ethnic groups.
This study was conducted to determine the effect of ethnicity on maternal, placental and neonatal parameters. Maternal, placental, and the newborn parameters were corrected for gestational age. The male:female sex ratio was 1:1.03. One hundred and forty-four freshly delivered placentae from 55 Malaysian, 51 Chinese, and 38 Indian normal healthy patients were collected and standard stereological methods used to estimate the placental parameters. Pearson's correlation, Spearman's correlation and 1-way ANOVA were used to test significance of differences. Placental surface area, placental weight and placental volume of Indians were lower than Malays (P< 0.05). Placental weight correlated significantly with neonatal length (r=0.527), birthweight (r=0.665), head circumference (r=0.371) and booking weight (r=0.193) while placental volume correlated with neonatal length (r=0.588), birthweight (r=0.688), head circumference (r=0.384), parity (r=0.202) and booking weight (r=0.219) at P< 0.05. Indian babies weight and length were less than Chinese and Malay babies (P< 0.05) while booking weight of Indian mothers was less than those of Chinese mothers (P< 0.05). Even after being corrected for booking weight, placental parameters of Indian patients were still significantly less than Malays and Chinese (P< 0.05).
We reviewed the deliveries in a teaching hospital in a multiracial community over the period of one year (1988), and investigated the relationship between maternal height, ethnic origin, and the extremes of birth weight with the likelihood of emergency lower segment caesarean section (LSCS). After excluding patients with obvious indications for LSCS, 5,050 patients were entered in the study. Chi-square analysis showed that the risk of emergency LSCS is significantly higher in the Indians compared to Chinese and Malays, but does not differ significantly between the latter two groups. Logistic regression analysis showed that birth weight of less than 2,500 g or greater than 3,500 g is the most significant association with emergency LSCS rate. Conditional logistic regression showed that, provided the individuals conformed to the characteristics of the cohort in this study, risk of emergency LSCS for a 150 cm (25th centile) tall Indian pregnant lady is almost twice that of a 158 cm (75th centile) tall non-Indian).