[Age-related changes in the physical development of Kabardin-Balkarian school-children living at various heights above sea level].

Four and eighty-one schoolchildren aged 7-17 years, living at a height of 2100 m above sea level, and 1677 schoolchildren of the same age, living at a height of 100-400 m above sea level, from the Kabardin-Balkarian Republic were examined by the list of morphological indices of physical development (PD), such as height (cm), body weight (kg), and chest circumference (cm). The results were rated by using the 5-score scale, by calculating the integral indicator of PD (low, moderate, and high). The schoolchildren living at high heights were ascertained to have high values. In the schoolchildren living at low heights, PD is of more harmony; the altitude children have the developed chest along with the smaller height and lower body weight. The geographical differences in three parameters of PH between Kabardin-Balkarian schoolchildren were heterodirectional: the altitude children outrun the plain one in height during a short period of time (the boys outrun at the age of 10 to 13 years; the girls do at the age of 11 to 14 years). In terms of body weight, the children from the study groups either outrun, or lag each other, in the boys and girls, these variations being opposite in time. From the age of 10 years, the altitude children of both sexes surpass the plain ones in chest circumference.