[The preliminary development of reference values of carotid artery intima-media thickness in children aged 6-11 years].

Objective: To develop the reference values of carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) in Chinese children aged 6-11 years. Methods: A convenient cluster sampling method was used to conduct a cross-sectional survey from November 2017 to January 2018 in a primary school in Huantai County, Zibo City, Shandong Province. A total of 1 033 children aged 6-11 years (excluding children with obesity or hypertension) were included. Percentile curves for cIMT were drawn using the lambda, mu and sigma (LMS) method. Results: This study developed the cIMT reference values ( P (90) and P (95)) for sex and age aged 6-11 years, including P (90) and P (95) reference values of mean cIMT, left cIMT and right cIMT, respectively. With the increase of age, the cIMT percentile values also increased. For the same age and the same percentile, the cIMT values of boys were higher than those of girls. Conclusion: This study developed sex-specific and age-specific cIMT percentile reference values in children aged 6-11 years.