Assessing the risk factors of preterm births in Kurdistan, Iran: a case-control study

Background: Preterm birth is one of the most common causes of mortality in infants. Despite advances in health care and better access to health services in many countries, preterm birth has increased over the past two decades. Methods This case control study was conducted on two groups with 100 participants including 100 preterm infants (case) and 100 term infants (control) with gender match in Kurdistan Province-Iran in 2018. The required information was collected from medical files and interviewing the mothers as to demographical information, midwifery specifications, background diseases, disease over pregnancy term, and infants’ information. Conditional logistic regression test was used to estimate the final model and compute the risk ratio. Results Multivariate regression analysis showed that the risk of preterm birth in individual with AB blood type was higher (OR=5.04; 95% CI 1.40-18.08). In addition, the risk of preterm birth was higher in the mothers with a history of stillbirth (OR=13.63; 95% CI 1.39-133.5). Preterm birth was significantly related to the history of birth diseases, history of pregnancy diseases, and using medicine for specific diseases during pregnancy. Conclusions Blood type of mother, history of still birth, history of birth disease, history of pregnancy diseases, using medicines for specific diseases, and history of preterm birth were the risk factors of preterm birth. These factors need to be taken into account before and during pregnancy. Paying more attention to these factors attenuates the rate of preterm birth and premature infants and in turn the mortality rate of infants and mothers.