Boom Yuliya Vyacheslavovna

Introduction. The purpose of this work was to study the physical development of modern newborns in rural areas and analyze the influence on their basic anthropometric indicators of such biological factors as the serial number of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as the age of the parents at time of.

Materials and methods. Materials on rural children were collected in 2020–2022 in the Baranovichi district of the Brest region of the Republic of Belarus on the basis of the Children's City Clinic in the city of Baranovichi. The method of analyzing outpatient cards was used. A total of 231 newborn histories were studied (120 boys and 111 girls). The main anthropometric characteristics of children (body weight, body length, head circumference and chest circumference), as well as the age of the parents and the number of pregnancies and births in the mother were taken into account. The significance of differences was assessed based on Student's t-test. To conduct a comparative analysis of the dynamics over time of the physical development of newborns, materials from surveys of 1976–1978 were used.

Results. The bulk of modern births were women aged 25–34 years (66,6%). More than half of the newborns were born from repeated births – 79,2%. The average age of primiparous women was 25,2±0,7 years, multiparous women – 30,5±0,4. It was found that modern rural newborns had higher average indicators of physical development than newborns of 1976–1978, except for head circumference. Children from repeated births were larger in size, especially boys, in whom the difference reached a statistically significant level. Weak but significant positive correlations were noted between some indicators of the physical development of rural newborns with the age of the parents and the serial number of pregnancy and birth of the mother.

Conclusion. Analysis of changes in the main anthropometric indicators of physical development of rural newborns revealed an excess of the average parameters of body weight, body length (p<0,001) and chest circumference in children of both sexes, compared with infants of 1976–1978. Boys had higher basic anthropometric indicators than girls. © 2023. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license.