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Leg length has been suggested as a proxy for nutritional and environmental exposures in childhood given the associations observed in some Western populations. 1, 2 Sanjay Kinra et al. 3 present a careful assessment of this hypothesis in an Indian population in this issue of the International Journal of Epidemiology and observe no association between nutritional supplementation and relative leg length, and relative lower leg length, among adolescents in the Hyderabad cohort. Although intriguing, given previous findings4, 5 and the proposed sensitivity of ‘lower’leg length as a marker for nutritional status, 6 the null finding reported by Kinra and colleagues is in accord with other studies in non-Western populations. 7, 8

To our knowledge, only one other study has specifically examined the association of nutritional supplementation in early childhood with leg length in ‘childhood’. 4 This study set in 1930s Britain …