Search

Objectives Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is a leading cause of cervical cancer, yet existing social stigmas and unequal access to healthcare compromise its preventability through screening and vaccination. Understanding healthcare professionals’ knowledge and perceptions of HPV is pivotal in enhancing the quality and effectiveness of preventive healthcare strategies. This article aims to explore and understand the relationship between healthcare workers’ knowledge and stigma towards HPV. Design and Methods A questionnaire of 27 stigma and 24 knowledge questions was provided for healthcare personnel. Demographic questions were also included. Stigma levels were determined based on a total median score. Fully adjusted multinomial logistic regression models were used to find the correlation between knowledge regarding HPV and the stigma level. Results Five hundred fifty-two healthcare workers answered the questionnaire. The findings showed that while most participants had adequate to moderate knowledge about the prevention and complications of HPV, they lacked knowledge about symptoms and treatment. Stigma towards HPV disease was evident in some participants, with attitudes varying depending on demographic factors and knowledge level. The model indicated that age, gender, and specific knowledge questions were significantly associated with stigma levels. Interestingly, the presence of knowledge in some areas increased the stigma level. Conclusions In conclusion, the study sheds light on the stigmatization and knowledge gaps regarding HPV disease among healthcare personnel and, intriguingly, that increased knowledge does not necessarily correlate with decreased stigma. The findings highlight the need for targeted education and training programs to improve healthcare providers’ knowledge in these specific areas.

Abstract Introduction This study aimed to detect interdisciplinary subjects for integration into the medical education program of Iran. Methods A qualitative-quantitative method was used. Firstly, interdisciplinary subjects demanded by medical graduates and senior medical students were defined by qualitative study. In the second stage, questionnaire was developed which based on the findings of qualitative stage, experts’ opinion and reviewing of the national general guide of professional ethics for medical practitioners. Questionnaire consisted of demographic, occupational and thirteen interdisciplinary items. These items consisted of social determinants of health, social and economic consequences of disease, social prescribing, physicians’ social responsibility, role of gender, racial, ethnic, social and economic issues in approach to patients, role of logic and mathematics in clinical decision-making, philosophy of medicine, maintaining work-life balance, self-anger management, national laws of medicine, religious law in medical practice, health system structure, and teamwork principles. Level and importance of knowledge and self-assessed educational needs were asked about each item. In the third stage, a national online survey was conducted. SPSS 25 was used for statistics. Results By content analysis of data in qualitative stage, 36 sub-themes and 7 themes were extracted. In the quantitative part, 3580 subjects from 41 medical universities across Iran participated in this study. 2896 (80.9%) were medical graduates and 684 (19.1%) were senior medical students. Overall, knowledge about interdisciplinary items was low to intermediate, while high to very high knowledge ranged from maximally 38.7% about socioeconomic consequences of disease to minimally 17.2% about social prescribing. Participants gave the most importance to the having knowledge about self-anger management (88.3%), maintaining work-life balance (87.2%) and social determinants of health (85.8%), respectively. However, national laws of medicine (77.6%), maintaining work-life balance (75.4%) and self-anger management (74%) were the first top three educational demands by participants. Conclusion This study revealed a low to moderate level of knowledge about interdisciplinary topics among both graduated medical physicians and senior medical students. These groups showed a strong demand and tendency to know and to be educated about these topics. These findings underscore the urgency for educational reforms to meet the interdisciplinary needs of medical professionals in Iran.

Background: Many high-risk behaviors often co-occur during adolescents’ development and can be linked to their life patterns, beliefs, and early maladaptive schemas (EMS). This research aimed to determine the association between EMS and high-risk behaviors among teenagers in Shiraz, Iran.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2022, involving 348 adolescents aged 13 to 19 selected through a convenience sampling method in Shiraz, Iran. The Young Schema Questionnaire was utilized to assess EMS, and a researcherdeveloped self-reported checklist was used to collect demographic and behavioral data from the adolescents, including smoking, drug usage, alcohol use, and hookah use. Logistic regression assessed the association between behavioral characteristics and adolescents’ EMS aspects.Results: Among the 348 adolescents, 187 (53.7%) were male. The relative frequencies of hookah, alcohol, and drug use among boys were 31.6%, 40.1%, and 10.2%, respectively, whereas among girls, they were 11.2%, 15.5%, and 1.2%, respectively. A significant difference was observed between the two groups in terms of the relative frequencies of hookah (P=0.001), alcohol (P=0.001), and drug usage (P=0.008). A significant association was found between different domains of schemas and high-risk behaviors among the participants.Conclusion: The findings suggested that EMS may predict high-risk behaviors. Therefore, early-life interventions should be considered in line with factors contributing to controlling the negative consequences of EMS among adolescents. Further research is recommended to evaluate this population’s predisposing factors for EMS and preventive interventions.

Background: Chronic patients need regular follow-ups. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these regular visits can be affected. The delay of chronic patients and its contributing factors in their periodic visits during the COVID-19 pandemic are examined here.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted between February and June 2021, in Fars, Iran. Two hundred and eighty-six households with at least one chronic patient were recruited. Then, several trained questioners called the studied households and asked about the studied variables. The dependent variable was the number of delays in regular visits during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results were analyzed through Poisson regression by SPSS Statistics version 22 and GraphPad Prism software version 9. A significance level of 0.05 was considered for this study.Results: Out of 286 households 113 (73.4%) fathers, 138 (70.1%) mothers, and 17 (58.6%) children in the households reported delayed referral. In fathers, referring to the health center was significantly associated with a decrease in the number of delays (P=0.033). The higher age of the householder (P=0.005), the higher number of children (P=0.043), and having a family physician (P=0.007) in the mothers' group, also the number of children in households P=0.001 in the children group were significantly associated with increasing the number of delays.Conclusion: COVID-19 pandemic not only creates direct harmful effects but also adversely affects people in danger of chronic diseases. Delays in follow-ups are taken into account as a major challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. This issue is not limited to rural or urban residency.

Resilient modulus (Mr) of subgrade soils is considered as one of the most important factors for designing flexible pavements using empirical methods as well as mechanistic-empirical methods. The resilient modulus is commonly measured by a dynamic triaxial loading test, which is complex and expensive. In this research, back-propagation artificial neural network method has been employed to model the resilient modulus of clayey subgrade soils based on the results of the cone penetration test. The prediction of the resilient modulus of clayey subgrade soil can be possible through the developed neural network based on the parameters of the cone tip resistance (qc), sleeve friction (fs), moisture content (w), and dry density (γd). The results of the present study show that the coefficients of determination (R2) for training and testing sets are 0.9837 and 0.9757, respectively. According to the sensitivity analysis results, the moisture content is the least important parameter to predict the resilient modulus of clayey subgrade soils, while the importance of other parameters is almost the same. In this study, the effect of different parameters on the resilient modulus of clayey subgrade soil was evaluated using parametric analysis and it was found that with increasing the cone tip resistance (qc), the sleeve friction (fs) and the dry density (γd) and also with decreasing the moisture content (w) of soils, the resilient modulus of clayey subgrade soils increases.

In order to accurately interpret the immune response to COVID-19, it is critical to know how long serum antibodies to COVID-2 persist. This study aimed to describe the serum IgG responses to SARS-CoV-2 in patients with mild, moderate, and severe COVID-19 infection in Birjand, South Khorasan province, Iran. The study was performed on individuals whose COVID-19 disease was confirmed by RT-PCR and recovered from the disease. After completing the questionnaire, blood samples were collected from 4 different groups based on the time of the test at two, four, six, and eight months' post-recovery. Then, SARS-COV-2 virus-specific IgG nucleocapsid antibody level in patients was measured using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). In total, 206 patients (mean age 44.19 ​± ​14.9, 51% man) were included in the survey. Serum prevalence of specific IgG antibodies in patients with mild, moderate, and severe COVID-19 disease was 51.5%, 64% and 78.9%, respectively. Furthermore, serum prevalence of COVID-19 specific IgG antibody level in two, four, six, and eight months after recovery were 80.8, 69.1, 43.2 and 41.8%, respectively (p ​ ​0.05). In the present report, we attempted to characterize the antibody response against SARS-CoV-2 in patients with mild, moderate, and severe COVID-19, with the aim of better elucidating the humoral immune response after recovery from SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Objectives: Chiari malformation exhibits well-defined clinical signs, symptoms, and incidence rates in clinical studies. However, cerebellar tonsil ectopia presents with ambiguous symptoms and undetermined incidence rates in numerous studies. Our objective was to determine the incidence of cerebellar tonsil ectopia in individuals with headaches and identify additional clinical symptoms. This aims to improve diagnosis accuracy for clinicians and neurologists, leading to more effective treatment approaches. Methods: A cross-sectional study conducted in 2022 included 2305 participants aged 4–78 years presenting with headache. Chiari malformation was diagnosed using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, with a definition of cerebellar tonsil herniation extending beyond 5mm into the cervical canal. Results: The prevalence of Chiari malformation was 3.4%, with no significant gender difference (p = 0.72). There was a significant correlation between Chiari malformation and headache exacerbation due to the Valsalva maneuver (p < 0.001) and the presence of vertigo (p < 0.001). No significant association was found between Chiari malformation and accompanying symptoms such as nausea (p = 0.43), photophobia (p = 0.2), phonophobia (p = 0.52), and speech disorders (p = 0.45). Conclusion: These findings suggest a notable prevalence of Chiari malformation among headache patients and its association with specific headache characteristics, such as acute and occipital headaches, exacerbation by the Valsalva maneuver, and the co-occurrence of vertigo. These results underscore the need to consider Chiari malformation in the differential diagnosis of patients presenting with these specific headache features.

Abstract Background and purpose Fatty liver is one of the most common pre-existing illnesses; it can cause liver injury, leading to further complications in coronavirus disease 2019 patients. Our goal is to determine if pre-existing fatty liver is more prevalent in hospitalized COVID-19 patients compared to patients admitted before the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and determine the disease severity among fatty liver patients. Experimental approach This retrospective study involves a case and a control group consisting of 1162 patients; the case group contains hospitalized COVID-19 patients with positive PCR tests and available chest CT-scan; the control group contains patients with available chest CT-scan previous to the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients’ data such as liver Hounsfield unit, hospitalization length, number of affected lobes, and total lungs involvement score were extracted and compared between the patients. Results The findings indicate that 37.9% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients have a pre-existing fatty liver, which is significantly higher (P

Background and Objectives: Health care workers (HCWs) are a high-risk group for acquiring and transmitting severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Aim of the study was the evaluation of sero-prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in a random sample of HCWs at a large acute care hospital in Iran. Materials and Methods: We collected blood samples of 180 medical staffs from September 22, 2020 to January 26, 2021. The enzyme linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) tests were used for evaluation of the presence of IgG antibodies. Participants completed a self-report questionnaire, comprising demographics, occupational, the work area, and personal protection data. Results: Of the 180 HCWs who participated in this study, 44 (24.4%) were seropositive for anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG. The percentage of IgG positivity was higher in males than females (P0.05). Conclusion: According to this point that the number of COVID-19 cases is still growing rapidly among HCWs. So, the epidemiological estimate of SARS-CoV-2 infection remains a major challenge that is needed to prevent the spread of infection in the hospitals.