Prevalence and determinants of anaemia among children aged 0–59 months in a rural region of Armenia: a case–control study

Abstract

Objective: Despite the trend of increasing prevalence of childhood anaemia in Armenia, no studies exploring its risk factors have been conducted in the country. The present study aimed to investigate the prevalence and determinants of childhood anaemia in rural Armenia. Design: Blood Hb level was measured among a representative sample of children using the HemoCue Hb201 + analyser. The revealed cases with anaemia were compared with randomly selected non-anaemic controls. Mothers of cases and controls were interviewed. Logistic and linear regression models were fitted to identify the risk factors of anaemia and low Hb level, respectively. Setting: Talin communities, Aragatsotn Province, Armenia. Subjects: Children under 5 years of age in Talin region. Results: Of the 729 studied children, 32·4 % were anaemic with 14·7 % having moderate/severe anaemia. Infants were the most affected group with 51·1 % being anaemic before 6 months and 67·9 % at 6-12 months of age. Fitted regression models identified the following predictors of anaemia: younger age, male gender, shorter birth length, anaemia during pregnancy, lower meal frequency per day, lack of meat in the diet, using dung cakes for heating and living in a community that received an incomplete set of nutrition interventions. Conclusions: The study identified several modifiable risk factors that could be targeted to reduce childhood anaemia in rural Armenia and, possibly, in rural areas in other low-/middle-income countries. The suggested interventions include prevention and treatment of anaemia during pregnancy, provision of adequate complementary feeding to children with inclusion of meat in their daily diet and reduction of their exposure to biomass fuel smoke.

What factors are associated with the increase of anemia in Ethiopian children aged 6 to 59 months between 2011 and 2016?

“…Age had the highest (Cramer’s V = 0.25) strength of association with anemia than the rest of the predictor variables studied (Table 2 ). Similar to findings from Armenia [ 20 ] and India [ 21 ], infants aged 9–11 months had the highest prevalence (72.7%) of anemia. At the same time except for 9–11 month infants, all forms of anemia increased across all age categories (Fig.…”

Epidemiology of iron deficiency anaemia in four European countries: a population‐based study in primary care

“…To date, few studies (1) have been conducted to investigate the epidemiology of IDA. Most of them were focused on populations of developing countries (15)(16)(17)(18), selected cohorts of patients with kidney (19) and/or cardiovascular diseases (20).…”

Maternal depressive symptoms are not associated with child anaemia: A cross‐sectional population study in Peru, 2015

“…For the multivariable model, we added potential confounding factors, cumulatively, in blocks. We considered variables of the mother and child according to previous literature (Ayoya et al, 2013; Demirchyan, Petrosyan, Sargsyan, & Hekimian, 2016; El Kishawi, Soo, Abed, & Wan Muda, 2015; Habib et al, 2016; Khan, Awan, & Misu, 2016; Velásquez‐Hurtado et al, 2016; Wieringa et al, 2016; Woldie et al, 2015). Age and sex were the first adjusted variables.…”