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Background and Objective: Tuberculosis (TB) is the most important cause of death worldwide. The main reason for the increasing global burden of TB are severe poverty and class distinctions between rich and poor population groups in various communities. This study was performed to determine the relationship between socio-economic factors and TB using negative binomial and Poisson regression models. Method: This descriptive - analytic study was conducted on 11320 TB affected patients in Iran during 2010. Data was gathered from the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education. The relationship between the numbers of cases with socio-economic indicators was determined using negative binomial and Poisson models. Fitting models were compared using AIC (Akaike Information Criterion) and BIC (Bayesian Information Criterion). Results: The Poisson regression model showed a significant relationship between the TB mortality rate and socio-economic factors (P<0.05). Negative binomial regression model showed a significant relationship between TB and unemployment, illiterate, immigration and urban residency (P<0.05). Negative binomial regression model showed no relationship between TB and family size, physicians’ ratio to the number of population centers and annual average income. Conclusion: There is a significant impact of socio-economic factors with the number of TB cases. Negative binomial regression model is suitable for accountable data in comparision with Poisson regression model.

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Background and Objective: Tuberculosis (TB) is the main cause of death in the world. Half of the patient eventually will die during first 5-year of infection if they do not receive suitable treatment. According to WHO’s report, treatment success in Iran is lower than the regional and global mean. This study was conducted to identify the effective factors of treatment failure among tuberculosis patient in golestan province- Iran.

Methods: This cross- sectional study was conducted on 331 new smear positive tuberculosis patients that detected in TB laboratory in in golestan province-north of Iran during 2014. Inclusion criteria included weight more than 30kg, age greater than 13 years, diabetes, immune deficiency, liver or kidney diseases. Patients were treated according to a protocol for a period of two months on the DOTS strategy. The criterion of treatment outcome was sputum smear at the end of the second month of treatment. The effect of gender, medication regiment, age, weight, smoking, addiction and severity of smear basilli load on treatment outcome was assessed.

Results: 50.8% and 49.2% of patients were treated with combination and separate medicinal regiments, respectively. The conversion rate of smear positive was 67.7% at the end of the second months. According to multivariate logistic regression, the age of the patient (95% CI: 0.96-0.99, OR: 0.98, P=0.017), addiction (95% CI: 1.26-4.54, OR: 2.4, P=0.008), ethnicity (95% CI: 1.86-7.02, OR: 3.62, P=0.0001) and diagnostic smear bacilli load (P<0.0001) were the important effective variables.

Conclusion: The success of two months treatment was fairly low and the important factors on treatment success during the intensive phase were patient age, smoking, addiction and diagnostic smear bacilli load.