These studies are generally used by clinicians and pathologists for adequate assessments of the growth and development of the fetus at any specific point of gestational maturity.
In Africa and South Asia, 27%-50% of women in the reproductive age are underweight resulting in 30 million low birth weight babies.
[2] For decades, the topic of question pertaining to crown-rump length (CR), crown-heel length (CH), head circumference (HC) with respect to the body weight of human fetus at different time periods of gestation has baffled many developmental researchers and biostatisticians.
[3][4][5][6][7][8] Body weight, for example, is an important function and parameter for growth with respect to gestational age of the fetus.
[10][11][12][13] Growth of the individual organs is controlled by the genetic potential, the environment provided by the mother and by the fetus itself.
[14][15][16] Streetr, Schults et al., all studied the fetal dimensions obtained from spontaneous abortions and pathological pregnancies on mainly formed and fixed specimens.
[17] The growth of an organ from inception to a definitive functional stage is dependent on the integrated function of the whole organism which depends on a number of parameters such as the nucleic acid content of the cells which is one of the most important factors.
[19] Further a Polish study reported a similar report that some measurements like the ear height, muscular strength of the shoulders, skin fold thickness, mandibular breadth including the height of the upper and the lower limbs can be co-related to the mother also.
[20] Similar observations were also reported by Gueri et al.[21] One of the first original and unique works to be conducted on the anthropometric measurement of the human fetus in the Indian context was conducted by a group of scientists in Calcutta between 1977 and 1987 under the supervision of K.L.Mukherjee, a stalwart in the field of medical biochemistry in Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research.
At 8–12 weeks of gestation, liver is a relatively bigger organ which forms 4-5-5.5% of the total body weight and protrudes through the abdominal wall.
The brain at this time had already assumed the appearance of primary divisions and flexures, and the prosen, messen and rhombocephalon already gave rise to the different brain-derived constituents like rhinocephalon, corporastriata, cerebral cortex, hypo and epithalamus and pons medulla to a less differentiation extent.
[22] In the early gestational period, the weight of the adrenal glands outweighs even the metanephric kidneys and is comparatively a larger organ.
It soon flattened to increase with different spikes consistently throughout the whole length of the gestational period.
With an increase in gestational time, the fetal organs also grow in progression to the body weight, the phenomenon which is still not understood clearly by many researchers.
Some believe that genetic potentiality of the different endocrine organs related to the growth and various other unidentified processes mediate the whole phenomenon.