Social, economic, and health indexes affecting epidemiology of preterm birth: A cross-sectional study

Background and AimPreterm birth (PTB) accompanies with morbidities and mortality among newborns. This study aimed to show that different factors such as economic (adjusted net national income and gross domestic product [GDP] per capita), human developmental (human developmental index), and health (overall health performance, pregnancy prenatal care rate, and modeled estimated maternal mortality rate) indexes might influence the prevalence of PTB.MethodsTo this, the top 10 countries with the highest and lowest prevalence of PTB were extracted from the Global Burden of Disease report for PTB. Then, we have gathered some common indexes for economic (adjusted net national income and GDP per capita), health-related (overall health performance, pregnancy prenatal care rate, and modeled estimated maternal mortality rate), and combined developmental (human developmental index) factors from different resources including World Bank and United Nations for those countries. The truncated Bayesian linear regression model, decision tree, and k-means clustering algorithms were used for data analysis.ResultsThe results showed Pregnancy Prenatal Care Rate index has a significant effect on the PTB rate in the top 10 countries with the highest prevalence of PTB. Also, for the top 10 less prevalent countries for PTB, it was shown that modeled estimated maternal mortality rate, human developmental index rank, and pregnancy prenatal care rate have significant effects on PTB rate. In addition, the clustering based on the similarities in socioeconomic, human developmental, and health indexes were approximately like with the clustering of the countries based on the PTB rates (Rand index = 0.823).ConclusionThe results showed studies on the epidemiology of PTB (either worldwide or nation-based) should consider these confounder factors to obtain accurate results.