Research article

Epidemiology of childhood Guillan-Barre syndrome in the north west of Iran

Mohammad Barzegar¹ , Saeed Dastgiri² , Mohammad H Karegarmaher³ and Ali Varshochiani³

¹Department of Pediatrics, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences

²Research Centre for Infectious diseases and National Public Health Management Centre

³Department of Community and Family Medicine, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences

author email corresponding author email

BMC Neurology 2007, 7:22doi:10.1186/1471-2377-7-22

Published:	5 August 2007

Abstract

Background and aims

This study was carried out to investigate the incidence, annual time trend and some epidemiological and clinical features of Guillain-Barre syndrome in children in the north west of Iran.

Materials and methods

In this population-based cross sectional research, epidemiological and clinical features of 143 cases with Guillain-Barre syndrome between 2001 and 2006 were studied. The setting of the study was Tabriz Children Medical Centre, the major University-Hospital located in Tabriz city of the East Azarbaijan province covering whole region. Data collected included age, gender, chronological information, preceding events, functional grade of motor deficit.

Results

The mean age (standard deviation) of subjects was 5.4 (3.6) years. The male/female ratio was 1.3. The average annual incidence rate was 2.27 per 100 000 population of 15 years children (CI95%: 1.9–2.6). The majority of cases occurred in March, July and November and the highest proportion of the syndrome was observed in winter (29 percent, P > 0.10).

Conclusion

The results indicated that an unexpected high incidence of Guillain-Barre syndrome has occurred in 2003 in the region. We concluded that a monitoring and surveillance system for Guillain-Barre syndrome is essential to set up in this region.