Use of meta-anaglysis to determining the associated factors of an outbreak occurred in the summer 2005 in Iran

According to the report of Iranian Center of Disease Control, in the summer of 2005 an outbreak of cholera (Inaba serotype) occurred in Iran. The outbreak lasted the mid of September. The aim of this study was to use the result of different studies performed during this period to determine source of infection. Methods and Materials: This is a meta-analysis study, which studies performed in Qum, Arak, Karaj, Golestan and Ghazvin were eligible. All of these studies were case control ones performed during the August 2005. The total of cases were 531. Pooled odds ratios was used to estimate by fixed and random method. All computations were performed by Stata 8 software. The estimated pooled odds ratios resulted from 5 differemt studies were used in the meta-analysis as the following: travelling (1.64; 95% CI: 0.98-1.88), non-pasteurized ice cream (0.88; 95%CI: 0.48-1.61), post toilet hand washing (3.72; 95% CI: 0.86-16.05), eating meal outside home (2.38; 95% CI: 1.46-3.90), raw fruit eating (0.98; 95% CI: 0.42-2.18) and raw vegetables use (5.36; 95%CI: 2.4-12). According to the results of this study raw vegetable use and having meal outside home were significantly associated to the cholera in mentioned provinc