AIM: The present study aimed to develop age- and sex-specific anthropometric reference growth curves for the Pakistani children, aged 1-60 months.

METHODS: The weight and height of 60 595 children including 30 885 (50.96%) boys and 29 710 (49.04%) girls from Pakistan were collected through a cross-sectional study. Growth reference charts about weight-for-age, length/height-for-age, and body BMI-for-age were constructed for boys and girls using the generalised additive model for location, scale and shape (GAMLSS) with the Box-Cox power exponential distribution.

RESULTS: The 3rd, 5th, 15th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 85th, 95th and 97th smoothed percentile values with L, M and S for weight, length/height, and BMI for boys and girls from aged 1 to 60 months are presented. The median percentile for all indicators increases as the age increases in both sexes. The median percentiles of the Pakistani children are lower than the WHO 2006 standards for both sexes.

CONCLUSION: This study provides the first references for the Pakistani children from 1 to 60 months. The reference values could be taken as a starting point for examining the secular change in the Pakistani population.