Objective: As indicated by previous studies, children born via Caesarean section may have an increased risk of developing asthma compared with those born via vaginal delivery. The aim of this study is to assess the association between a Caesarean section and the risk of childhood asthma. Methods: This was a case-control study carried out in Basrah, Iraq including 952 children aged 3-12 years. Four hundred and seven asthmatic cases and a control group of 545 age-matched non-asthmatic children were enrolled. Binary logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between asthma and birth via Caesarean section. Results: The mean age of the children was 6.7±2.5 years. Two-hundred eighty-three children (29.7%) were delivered via Caesarean section. The binary logistic regression analysis showed that delivery via Caesarean section was found to be an independent significant risk factor for asthma (OR=3.37; 95% CI=1.76-6.46; p<0.001). In addition, many other risk factors were found to be significant predictors of asthma, including bottlefeeding (OR=27.29; 95% CI=13.54-54.99; p<0.001) and low birth weight (OR=16.7; 95% CI=6.97-37.49; p<0.001). Conclusion: Caesarean section is significantly associated with an increased risk of childhood asthma.

Planning to control tuberculosis requires identification of dominant strains in the region, transmission patterns and risk factors that are possible by using molecular genotyping techniques. The aim of this study is to determine the transmission of tuberculosis in the northwest of Iran in order to better understand the spread of disease in northwest of Iran. In this study, 194 positive mycobacterium cultivars in northwest of Iran were investigated using exact tandem repeat-variable number tandem repeats (ETR-VNTR) method. The ETR-VNTR method was identified 55 different patterns in 194 isolates, which contained 25 clusters and 30 unique patterns, and the largest cluster had 33 isolates, and discriminatory power of ETRVNTR method was determined 0.9322 in the examined samples. There are strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis located in the northwest of Iran that infect people, and ETRVNTR method can be used as a first-line method to examine the dynamics of tuberculosis transmission.