Height of Sotos Children

© Walter Gilbert 2001

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Note: For simplicity and clarity of writing, I will refer to the children (and the few adults) diagnosed with Sotos syndrome as Sotos children.

Comparing the heights of Sotos children with national norms is difficult given that responses to the survey come from all over the world. Therefore, the charts, below, reflect only children born in the United States and assumed (from eye and hair color) to be caucasian. Hopefully, this restricted sample will be representative of all Sotos children.

In the following charts, each red dot represents the [current] age and height of a Sotos child from the survey. The green line represents the U.S. average height vs. age (the 50th percentile), the blue line represents the 75th percentile, and the black line the 95 percentile. That is, the height of 95% of U.S. caucasian children will be at or below this black line for a given age.

It is easy to see that almost all of the the Sotos children are above the 95th percentile line; often well above it. However, as seems to be characteristic of Sotos syndrome, nothing is consistent: there are several children of average height for their age.





Height data taken from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, (NHANES III), 1988-94, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).