Regional seropositivity for Borrelia burgdorferi and associated risk factors: findings from the Rhineland Study, Germany

Table 5 Associations between age, sex, education and seropositivity as defined by either positive ELISA and positive or borderline immunoblot or borderline ELISA and positive immunoblot result

Outcome	Independent variables	Odds ratios (95% CI)	P-value
IgG seropositive (ref: non-positive)	Age	1.02 (1.01–1.04)	< 0.001
	Sex (ref: women)	1.82 (1.28–2.60)	0.001
	Education high (ref: middle)	1.41 (0.99–2.03)	0.063
	Education low (ref: middle)	0.49 (0.03–2.32)	0.486
IgM seropositive (ref: non-positive)	Age	1.00 (0.96–1.03)	0.850
	Sex (ref: women)	0.73 (0.27–1.83)	0.511
	Education high (ref: middle)	0.99 (0.39–2.54)	0.982
	Education low (ref: middle)	0.00 (NA)	0.988

The table displays the odds of having either a positive ELISA result and a subsequent positive or borderline immunoblot or a borderline ELISA result and a subsequent positive immunoblot for either IgG or IgM antibodies as a function of age, sex and education. Associations with a P-value below 0.05 are shown in bold
IgG immunoglobulin G; IgM immunoglobulin M; ref reference; CI confidence interval; NA not applicable because there were no participants in the low-education IgM seropositivity group

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