Nutritional status among children and adolescents is assessed using growth rates. The aim of this study was to assess age- and gender-specific height, weight, and body mass index (BMI) centiles among children and adolescents relative to World Health Organization (WHO) references.

A sample of 1040 school-aged children and adolescents aged 3–18 years from Multan District in Pakistan were selected for the study between January and March 2020. Multistage stratified random sampling was used for sample selection. Centile curves of height, weight, and BMI for age and gender were obtained using the lambda-mu-sigma (LMS) method, and results were compared with WHO 2007 references.

For boys and girls, the average height was 137.37 ± 8.24 and 135.62 ± 9.64 cm, average weight was 36.32 ± 6.84 and 35.21 ± 7.27 kg, and average BMI was 18.44 ± 2.67 and 18.36 ± 2.91, respectively. The height centiles of boys were higher than the WHO reference, and during the prepubertal period (age 8 years or older) the centiles were lower than the WHO reference. The height centiles of girls were higher than the WHO reference, and during the pubertal period (age 10 years or older) the centiles were lower than the WHO reference. The gender-wise BMI centiles were higher compared to the WHO reference.

The prevalence of thinness, overweight, and obesity in boys and girls was significantly higher than the WHO reference. The results of this study on centiles are up-to-date and will be used as a standard for comparison.