Global Health Action 2011
Prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in rural women of Tamilnadu: implications for refining disease burden assessments attributable to household biomass combustion
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Priscilla Johnson, et al.
Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the 13th leading cause of burden of diseaseworldwide and is expected to become 5th by 2020. Biomass fuel combustion significantly contributes toCOPD, although smoking is recognized as the most important risk factor. Rural women in developingcountries bear the largest share of this burden resulting from chronic exposures to biomass fuelsmoke. Although there is considerable strength of evidence for the association between COPD and biomasssmoke exposure, limited information is available on the background prevalence of COPD in thesepopulations.Objective: This study was conducted to estimate the prevalence of COPD and its associated factors amongnon-smoking rural women in Tiruvallur district of Tamilnadu in Southern India.
Design: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 900 non-smoking women aged above 30 years, from45 rural villages of Tiruvallur district of Tamilnadu in Southern India in the period between January and May2007. COPD assessments were done using a combination of clinical examination and spirometry. Logisticregression analysis was performed to examine the association between COPD and use of biomass for cooking. R software was used for statistical analysis.
Results: The overall prevalence of COPD in this study was found to be 2.44% (95% CI: 1.43-3.45). COPD prevalence was higher in biomass fuel users than the clean fuel users 2.5 vs. 2%, (OR: 1.24; 95% CI: 0.36-6.64) and it was two times higher (3%) in women who spend 2 hours/day in the kitchen involved in cooking. Use of solid fuel was associated with higher risk for COPD, although no statistically significant results were obtained in this study.
Conclusion: The estimates generated in this study will contribute significantly to the growing database of available information on COPD prevalence in rural women. Moreover, with concomitant indoor air pollution measurements, it may be possible to increase the resolution of the association between biomass use and COPD prevalence and refine available attributable burden of disease estimates.
