The Prevalence Rates of Reported SBS Symptom and Gender: A Case Study in a Middle School

Abstract

PP-29-148 Background/Aims: To describe the gender difference on the reported SBS symptom in a middle school case study. Methods: All students in Grade 1 and Grade 2 were selected in middle school A, Beijing. The SBS symptoms in past 1 year and in past 1 week were reported by the self-filling questionnaire. Finally, 385 students finished. Of them, 50.9% were boys and 49.1% were girls. A total of 165 students in Grade 1 finished reporting on 6 main SBS symptoms at exactly same point in 3 successive days in spring, summer, and winter. Database was established with Epidata 3.0. Logistic regression and fitted hybrid linear model provided by SPSS/PC13.0 were used. Results: Reported prevalence rates of SBS symptom both in past 1 year and past 1 week were closely related to the gender. After controlling other factors, reported prevalence rates of fatigue, eye itch or dry, overall SBS symptoms for girls in the last year were 1.851 times (OR = 1.851, P = 0.007), 1.672 times (OR = 1.672, P = 0.055), 1.600 times (OR = 1.600, P = 0.070) of those for boys, respectively; and the reported prevalence rates of fatigue, headache for girl in the last week were 1.871 times (OR = 1.871, P = 0.007), 1.685 times (OR = 1.685, P = 0.089)of those for boys, respectively. These results were similar to investigations on foreign adults' SBS symptoms. Fitted hybrid linear model analysis on repeated measure in different seasons indicated that gender was one of the impact factors related to the reported strength of SBS symptoms. After controlling other factors, the reported strength of eye itch or dry, concentration difficult, throat sore or dry, stuffy nose, overall SBS symptoms for boys were higher than those for girls, which were not seen any report before. Conclusion: Gender was related to SBS symptoms. Girls more likely suffered higher reported rates on SBS symptoms, while boys more likely suffered higher reported strength on SBS symptoms. All these indicated that girls had higher reported rates with lower strength threshold, while boys had lower reported rates with higher strength threshold.