The 10-year Trend of TB Rate in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran from 2001 to 2010

BACKGROUND The present study aimed to explore some risk factors affected the mean of the number of tuberculosis (TB) in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran between 2001 and 2010. METHODS Our time series study analyzed the data of 2,560 TB patients as registered with TB Patients Care System in West Azerbaijan Province from early 2001 to 2010. A checklist was prepared for collecting the data and they were then analyzed in SPSS V.16 software. RESULTS The percentage of male and percentage of female were close to each other (52.2% against 47.8%, respectively). A significant increasing trend of TB rate was found over the years of 2001and 2010 with a pick at 2008 (P<0.001). A Poisson log-linear analysis showed that the most important risk factor of the trend of rate was the level of education so that people with primary level or with illiterate level had a statistically significant TB rate of 5.21 (4.66-5.81), adjusted for years. The next risk factor was type of TB and place of residency, i.e., pulmonary TB cases had higher rate than External pulmonary TB cases (RR=1.67; (1.54-1.80). The last factor with the lowest risk was BCG with RR=1.29 (1.20-1.40) for people who received BCG compared to the people who had not received it. CONCLUSION Although the co morbidity of AIDS and TB was not a major problem, it is necessary that special attention be paid to the way of implementing the TB control program based on the demographic risk factors of the study population.