Investigating risk factors related to asthma in children before school age in rural and urban areas of West Azerbaijan province

Allergic disorders are one of the most critical health problems in the world. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of childhood asthma and its related factors among urban-rural preschool children.

In this descriptive cross-sectional study, children under 5 years referred to the Asthma, Allergy, and Immunology Clinic of Motahari Hospital were included. The children were divided into two groups: urban and rural group. A checklist in the form of a questionnaire (consisting of information about demographics, parental asthma, exposure to farm animals, and tobacco, adequate home air conditioning, use of antibiotics during the first year of life, maternal gestational age, type of delivery, birth weight, age of wheezing onset, length of breastfeeding, and siblings number) was filled by the parents of the children. Data were analyzed by using SPSS 21 software.

Of 149 children with asthma, 85 were boys (40.3%) and 61 were girls (59.7%). Among the compared risk factors of asthma between urban and rural patients, the statistically significant variables were Body Mass Index (BMI) which was high among urban children (p = 0.002), the number of siblings of children (urban = 74, rural = 75) (p < 0.001), age of wheezing onset (urban = 74, rural = 75) (p = 0.014), animal exposure (urban = 28.4%, rural = 46.7%) (p = 0.021), and cesarean section delivery (urban = 63.5%, rural = 37.3%) (p = 0.001) were statistically significant.

The risk of asthma among preschool children is strongly predicted by their area of residence in early life. This risk increases further in children accompanied with other asthma risk factors such as passive smoking, type of delivery, exposure to animals, and other discussed factors.