Prevalence of asthma and allergies in children from the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities in Cyprus: a bi-communal cross-sectional study

Table 1 Socio-demographic and other risk characteristics of the participating children aged 7–8 and 13–14 from the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities

	Children aged 7-8			Children aged 13-14
Participant characteristics	G/C	T/C	p^†	G/C	T/C	p^†
(expressed as percentages)	(n = 2216)	(n = 2353)	p^†	(n = 2452)	(n = 3135)	p^†
Female gender (%)	49.5	50.6		48.2	51.7
Parental education (%)
Only one secondary education	5.3	49.9		13.0	43.0
Both secondary education	40.9	30.3		46.7	36.8
Only one tertiary education	24.1	12.8		21.2	11.6
Both tertiary education	29.8	7.1	*	19.0	8.6	*
Area of residence (%)
Urban	66.5	40.9		65.9	46.5
Sub-rural	21.0	24.3		18.2	22.1
Rural	12.5	34.8	*	15.9	31.4	*
Family history of allergies (%)	37.0	19.5	*	16.5	10.9	*
Older siblings (%)
None	38.7	50.8		26.3	44.4
1	34.3	34.3		37.8	34.4
≥2	27.0	14.9	*	35.9	21.2	*
Passive smoking (%)
Not at all	60.1	46.7		49.7	43.1
Up to 20 cigarettes/day	25.3	40.3		35.5	48.3
More than 20 cigarettes/day	14.7	13.0	*	14.8	8.6
Animals at home/yard (%)	42.6	32.4	*	56.2	48.0	*
Farm animal at home/yard (%)	0.6	4.7	*	0.5	4.2	*
Caesarian delivery (%)^‡	31.7	39.0	*	- - -	- - -
Birth weight <2500gr (%)^‡	13.9	18.0	*	- - -	- - -
Duration of breastfeeding (%)^‡
Not at all	46.8	21.8		- - -	- - -
<4 months	32.5	24.2		- - -	- - -
≥4 months	20.6	54.0	*	- - -	- - -
Bedroom sharing (%)^‡	37.4	52.3	*	- - -	- - -
Nursery in first year of life (%)^‡	9.3	4.7	*	- - -	- - -
Maternal smoking during pregnancy (%)^‡	2.9	10.8	*	- - -	- - -
Active smoking (%)^‡	- - -	- - -		1.7	1.3

* P-value of χ² test comparing the G/C and T/C communities <0.01.
‡ Information on these variables was not obtained from the 13–14 year-old group, while active smoking was not included in the 7–8 year-old questionnaires.

ISSN: 1471-2458