November 2015: Adult height Prediction Study in Paris
Pediatric Radiology has published a paper on validation of adult height prediction (AHP) in the Paris longitudinal study of children born 1953-58.
The Paris study was one of the five famous studies conducted in the 1950s under the coordination of the International Children’s Centre, situated in Paris. The other studies were in Zurich, Stockholm, Brussels and London. The Zurich study of 231 normal children was used to design the BoneXpert AHP model, and the fact that the method has now been validated on a sister study is very satisfactory.
Paris and Zurich are 650 km apart, so there could be considerable differences in degree of urbanisation, culture, nutrition and other living conditions — as well as in the genetic background. Therefore this study tested whether the AHP method works well across multiple populations.
The root mean square deviation between the predicted and the observed adult height was found to be 2.8 cm for boys in the bone age range 6-15 years and 3.1 cm for girls in the bone age range 6-13 years. This performance is in the line with best results in such studies, and it shows that the quality of the Paris study is extraordinarily good: The hand images were made with correct pose, the images were recorded with good radiographic quality, and the stature was measured with a reliable stadiometer. Incidentally, the Paris study also formed the basis for Prof Michel Sempé’s development of the French bone age rating method Maturos.
There are now four studies validating the BoneXpert method for bone age assessment and adult height prediction:
- The Paris study of 109 normal children born 1953-58
- The Danish study of 164 normal children born 1939-64
- The Zurich Generation study of 198 normal children born 1973-91
- The Tübingen ISS study of 190 children with untreated Idiopathic Short Stature born 1970-90.
The Paris study is thus yet another step towards establishing the BoneXpert method as universally valid on European Caucasian children.
The abstract is here and is also included in the list of publications