BREASTFEEDING AND ASSOCIATED WITH ASTHMA AMONG CHILDREN IN BAGHDAD

*Nadia Ghazi Fakhri

ABSTRACT

Background: Breast feeding is the ideal method for infant's nutrition, is considered as the first immunization dose which can protected the infant from several diseases. Aims: to describe the association between breastfeeding and asthma among children in the age 2-5 years that visited the pediatric hospital during the study period. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted at the Pediatric hospital in Medical city in Baghdad for the period of first October 2018 to the end of May 2019. The sample size was 130 children by using the convenient sampling procedure. We recruited the samples that attend the outpatient's clinic and the inpatients that had admission during the study period. A special questionnaire was design by the investigator and it include the information which is related to demographic characteristic of participants. STATA version 13 was used to analysis this data. Results: One hundred and thirty children included in this study. Higher rate of cases was 56.1% in the age groups (4-5) years followed by 43.9% in the age group 2-3 years, the number of male cases were 68.5% more than female cases. In addition, higher rate of cases 83.9% were living in urban area and 16.1% were living in rural area. Higher rate of cases 60.8% were feed the child by mix method and 17.7% by breastfeeding. Conclusion: we conclude that there is a highly significant has been found between the age groups, presence animal in the house and type of feeding P<0.001, 0.002.

Keywords: Breastfeeding, Children, Asthma, Animal.