Prevalence of Helicobacter pylory and its associated factors among out patients visiting Wolkite University Specialized Hospital, Wolkite,Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Back ground:Globally, H. pylori is one of the public health important bacteria that affect a great proportion of human population. It causes of chronic gastritis, duodenal ulcers and subsequentely gastric carcinoma. Approximately,50% and 90% of adults are infected in developed and developing countries, respectively. Hence, risk of infection is high in the developing world. Objective: This study is aimed to determine the prevalence of H. pylori infection and associated factors among out patients visiting Wolkite University Specialized Hospital from September to January. Methodology: A hospital based cross-sectional study was conducted from September to January, 2020. Totally, 304 samples were collected from conveniently selected outpatients visiting the hospital during the study period. Majority (73.1%) of them had secondary and above formal education while 82(26.9%) were illiterate. Stool specimens were collected and diagnosed using H.pylori stool antigen test method. Socio-demographic data and associated risk factors were collected using pre-structured questionnaire and the quantitative datas were analyised using IBM SPSS v. 23. Moreover, analysis of association between variables were performed using chi-square, at p value <0.05. Results: A total of 304 individuals were participated in the study, of which, 172(56.6%) were males. In our study, the overall prevalence of H.pylori infection was 35.9%. The current finding shows, human habits, i.e. drinking of alcohol and coffee, smoking, and chewing chat were stastically correlated with the prevalence of H.pylori however, sociodemographic of participants, i.e. sex, education,and number of families, were not shown statistically associated. Conclusion and Recommendation: We concluded that, the human habits were correlated with H.pylori infection. The prevalence of H. pylori infection detected by fecal H.pylori antigen among outpatients at WUSH was 35.9%. Hence, increasing awareness of the communities on the H.pylori and assessed risk factors possibly reduce prevalence of the disease.