Region as a risk factor for asthma prevalence: statistical evidence from administrative data

Abstract

Geographical regions may have an influence on asthma exacerbation. No conclusive study has been conducted to fully support or dissipate this assertion. We sought to use a data-driven approach to investigate the possible effect of geographical location on asthma. This study was based on data collected by the Ministry of Health over a 6-year period from 2010 to 2015 and presented in their annual reports. Prevalence rates for 11 regions were computed using the analysis of variance and regression models to determine the proximal nature of the region as a risk factor for asthma. Our results show a statistically significant difference in prevalence rates of asthma among the 11 regions. The asthma prevalence rate among the male population was 18% (OR = 1.18, p = .011) more than for the female population. There was a positive marginal increase in the asthma prevalence over the period. Further, five groups were derived based on asthma prevalence rates and trends. The region has proximal risk factor and significantly associated with asthma prevalence over the period. We recommend the creation of a control mechanism that targets regions with higher prevalence and increasing trends.

KEYWORDS:

• Asthma prevalence
• biostatistics
• regional differences
• Oman

Acknowledgements

This study used administrative data transcribed from reports of the Ministry of Health published on online at https://www.moh.gov.om/en/web/statistics/annual-reports.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by Sultan Qaboos University, Internal [grant number IG/SCI/DOMS/17/01].

Notes on contributors

Ronald Wesonga

Ronald Wesonga holds a Ph.D in Statistics from the Makerere University Kampala, Uganda. Currently, he is based at the Department of Statistics, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. He is chair of the Data Science Analytics Lab (DSAL), a pioneer initiative that promotes statistics into its future. His research interests include; computational statistics, multivariate methods, bias reduction theory and classification error optimization.

Khidir Abdelbasit

Khidir M. Abdelbasit holds a PhD. in Statistics from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. He formerly worked for the University of Texas at Austin, USA and The University of Khartoum, Sudan. He is currently the head of the department of Statistics at Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. His research interest areas are applied statistics, experimental designs, generalized linear models and Statistics education.