RESULTS
Demographic and environmental characteristics of the 6 Kosovar centres have been already described15. Table 1 shows the prevalence of current eczema symptoms, severe eczema symptoms and eczema ever overall, and with and without wheeze, together with the respective 95% confidence intervals. The lowest prevalence of current eczema symptoms occurred in Ferizaj while the highest was in Gjakova. Eczema ever was lowest in Ferizaj again and highest in Gjakova. Overall, the proportion of adolescents with eczema and wheezing symptoms was much lower than that with only eczema symptoms. The prevalence of severe eczema symptoms was very low and similar among the centres.
Web tables 1 and 2 include the associations found in the univariate and multivariate logistic regressions of the different factors with current eczema symptoms and eczema ever, respectively, per centre. Those factors that were consistently associated with current eczema symptoms or eczema ever in most centres were sex, exercise, and paracetamol intake. Forest plots of those three factors showed a trend that male sex (figure 1) was associated to lower prevalence of eczema: pooled aOR=0.49; 95%CI 0.37-0.66, for current eczema; and pooled aOR=0.68; 96%CI 0.44-1.06, for eczema ever.
Figure 2 shows that exercise was associated to higher prevalence of current eczema symptoms and eczema ever, with no apparent dose-effect relationship. The pooled aOR and 95%CI for any frequency of exercise was 2.79 (1.89-4.10) and 2.07 (1.48-2.90) respectively for current eczema symptoms and eczema ever.
Contrary to exercise, paracetamol intake seemed to have a dose-response pattern of association, especially for current eczema symptoms. The pooled aOR and 95%CI were 1.33 (0.81-2.16) and 2.64 (1.61-4.33) for the intake of “at least once a year” and of “at least once a month”, respectively. The corresponding figures for eczema ever were: 1.09 (0.75-1.58) and 1.37 (0.85-2.22) (figure 3).
According to the results of the multilevel analyses, stratification by wheeze did not change the patterns of associations, although in those children who suffered from skin plus respiratory symptoms those associations seemed to be stronger. However, the low number of children in the eczema and wheeze group was considerably lower than in the group with eczema without wheeze, making comparisons problematic (table 2).