Jundishapur Journal of Chronic Disease Care
Year:2019 | Volume:8 | Issue:3|Papers Count:9

Background: According to theWorld Health Organization, the seventh major cause of humandeath in 2030 will be diabetes, which of course is a very severe disease and if not treated thoroughly and on time, can lead to critical problems, including death. Accordingly, diabetes is one of the main priorities in medical science researches, which usually produce lots of information. The role of data mining methods in diabetes research is critical, which is considered as one of the optimum procedures of extracting knowledge from a large amount of diabetes-related data. Objectives: This research has focused on developing an ensemble system using data-mining methods based on three classification methods, namely, weighted k-nearest neighbor, simple decision tree and logistic regression algorithms to detect diabetes mellitus of the human. Methods: The proposed ensemble method algorithm applies votes given by each of the classifiers to attain the final result. This voting mechanism considers each estimation of the classifiers as an input to the ensemble system and then computes the statistical mode for its output to get the majority vote. Results: Apparently, these classifiers give the accuracy of 77. 00%, 77. 30%, 79. 30%, and 80. 60% for decision tree, weighted k-nearest neighbor, logistic regression, and the ensemble method, respectively. Conclusions: The results of the proposed method illustrate an acceptable improvement of accuracy compared to other methods. Consequently, it supports the idea that hybrid approaches are more effective in comparison with the simple classification methods that use classifiers separately.

Background: Depression is a major disabling factor around the world. Most of the mental disorders immediately affect the inner moodandcognitive aspect of individuals. Therefore, hiding the depression can delay the early diagnosis and, consequently, a proper treatment in the patients. Objectives: We designed the study to determine the association between rheumatoid diseases and depression. Methods: This is a descriptive-analytic study which was performed on 354 patients referred to Rheumatology Clinic of Ahvaz, a province in south west of Iran in 2016. Then demographic information, depression, quality of life and social support were completed based on standardized questionnaires filled by the patients. Results: The prevalence of depression in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) and systemic sclerosis (SSc) patients was 61. 63%, 73. 52% and 60%, respectively. There is a meaningful relationship between depression, age and duration of disease in SSc patients. There is a significant relationship between depression and gender in SLE and RA patients. There is a significant relationship between depression and the degree of education of SLE patients. There is a meaningful relationship between depression and quality of life, social support and corticosteroid consumption. Conclusions: The prevalence of depression is very high in all three diseases, which is equal in terms of quality of life, social support and corticosteroid usage in all three diseases. Psychiatric disorders such as depression are common in rheumatic patients.

Background: Depression is one of the most common psychiatric diseases in cancer patients. Few studies showed that selfcompassion is a reliable predictor of mental health. Objectives: This study aimed to determine the relationship between self-compassion and depression in cancer patients referring to the OncologyWard of Shahid Baghaee Hospital in Ahvaz. Methods: This correlational study was conducted on 106 eligible adult cancer patientswhoreferred to the OncologyWard of Shahid Baghaee Hospital in Ahvaz. The patients were chosen using convenience sampling. Data were collected by a demographic questionnaire, the Beck depression scale, and the self-compassion scale (SCS-LF). Data were analyzed by SPSS 20 using descriptive statistics and Pearson’ s correlation coefficient. Results: This study recruited 106 cancer patients with ameanage of 41. 14 15. 12 years. The majority of the subjects were male (61. 3%), married (65. 1%), and urban residents (68. 9%). Chemotherapy was the most used treatment in these patients (70. 8%). The mean scores of self-compassion and depression were 3. 2  0. 41 and 19. 87  12. 55, respectively. These results indicated a moderate level of selfcompassion and a high level of depression in the patients. There was a significant negative correlation between self-compassion and depression (P < 0. 05). Conclusions: As the results of the present study indicated the high prevalence of depression in the studied patients and a negative relationship between depression and self-compassion, it is necessary to perform psychological interventions with an emphasis on compassion component to reduce depression in these patients.

Background: Students in medical sciences, especially nursing students, deal with many stressful factors. Stress-related psychological outcomes include anxiety, depression, and low self-confidence. Nowadays, sports exercises play a crucial role in improving lifestyle to prevent and manage stress and its consequences. Objectives: The present study intended to investigate the effect of Tai Chi exercise on the levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and self-confidence of nursing students. Methods: To this end, about 64 nursing students were selected and randomly divided into two 32 case and control groups in this clinical trial study. The case (experimental) group received 40-minute Tai chi training sessions three times a week for 8 weeks. Both groups completed DASS-42 questionnaire and Eysenck’ s Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) as a pre-test, post-test, and one-month follow-up. Results: The results of the present study indicated that unlike the control group, the total mean score of stress, anxiety, and depression significantly decreased in the case group (P < 0. 05), while self-confidence significantly increased in the case group during the pretest, post-test, and one-month follow-up (P < 0. 05). Conclusions: According to the results of the present study, it can be concluded that Tai Chi had a significant effect on reducing the stress, anxiety, and depression while enhancing the self-confidence of the intended nursing students. Furthermore, Tai Chi is recommended as a simple and inexpensive way to reduce students’ stress, anxiety, and depression, whereas improves their selfconfidence.

Background: Colon cancer is the third leading cause of death globally, and mucositis is one of the complications of cancer treatment following drug therapy. Objectives: This study investigated the effect of licorice root extract mouthwash with combined mouthwash on the incidence and severity of chemotherapy-induced mucositis symptoms in colon cancer patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs). Methods: In this clinical trial, 72 colon cancer patients were treated with chemotherapy. Apurposiverandomsample of patients was divided into two groups of intervention (n = 36) and control (n = 36). Patients in the control group received routinely used combined mouthwash. However, the intervention group received licorice root extract 5% from the beginning of the treatment according to the researcher’ s plan. Then, the degree of mucositis and ulcer area were recorded on the first, third, and seventh days of treatment based on the WHO standard tool for measuring mucositis severity. Results: The intervention and control groups had no significant difference on the first, third, and seventh days of treatment in the incidence of mucositis (P = 0. 554, P = 0. 308, and P = 0. 601, respectively) and the severity of mucositis (P = 0. 357, P = 0. 857, P = 0. 607, respectively). Conclusions: There was no difference in the efficacy of combined mouthwash and licorice root extract mouthwash in the incidence and severity of mucositis. Due to the interest of many patients in the use of herbal compounds, licorice root extract mouthwash can be used as an alternative to combined mouthwash.

Dear Editor, Human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is a causative agent of HTLV-1-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) and the adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) (1). There are 20 million HTLV-1 infected individuals worldwide. Of which, approximately 2% to 4% of HTLV-1 infected cases were developed to ATL; although, 90% of HTLV-1 infected individuals remain as an asymptomatic carrier (ACs) during their lives (2, 3)...

Background: The Clarivate Analytics Company defined the highly cited papers used to measure scientific performance. Altmetrics is a new indicator for evaluation of academic research, which evaluates the findings of research published on social networks. Objectives: This study aimed at evaluating the Altmetrics indicators of highly cited articles on chronic diseases in the two social networks of ResearchGate and Mendeley. Methods: This descriptive-cross sectional study was carried out using the scientometric method. The research data were collected during October 2018 by using Excel 2013 software. HistCiteTM andVOSviewer wereused as scientometric software. Datawere analyzed using SPSS version 19 through non-parametric statistical tests, such as Spearman and chi-square tests. The significance level was P < 0. 05. Results: According to the findings, the coverage rate of highly cited articles on chronic diseases on ResearchGate is about 96. 5%, which is better than Mendeley with 92. 4%. There was a significant relationship between citation with presence in social networks of research gate and Mendeley (P < 0. 05). Each paper indexed in ResearchGate has been read on average by 318. 73 individuals. In comparison with that, every paper in Mendeley has been read by 185. 76 people, respectively. There was a positive correlation between the number of citations in theWeb of Science and “ Read” rate of the papers in ResearchGate (0. 207) and Mendeley (0. 343) (P < 0. 05). Conclusions: Altmetric indicators evaluated activities in social media space. Increasing the presence of chronic diseases papers in social networks can actively influence dissemination of knowledge.

Background: A great number of people who have survived after stressful events experience positive psychological changes. These positive changes are recognized as posttraumatic growth. Objectives: The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship between posttraumatic growth and meaning in life in patients with myocardial infarction. Methods: This is a descriptive correlational study conducted on 191 patients referring to the largest cardiology center (Bu-Ali Sina) in Qazvin, Iran. The sample was selected through a convenience sampling method based on the inclusion criteria. The data were collected using a demographic questionnaire, the posttraumatic growth inventory, and the meaning in life questionnaire. Data were analyzed with descriptive analysis. Inferential statistics (Pearson’ s test) were used to evaluate the relationship between posttraumatic growth and meaning in life. Results: The sample included 49 (25. 7%) women and 142 (74. 3%) men with the mean age of 59. 6 1. 2 years. The mean total score of posttraumatic growth was 64. 6 11. 5 and the mean total score of meaning in life was 49 6. 04. Based on the results, there was a significant positive correlation between posttraumatic growth and meaning in life (r = 0. 71, P < 0. 001). Conclusions: The occurrence of myocardial infarction can lead to some positive psychological changes called posttraumatic growth. Nurses, informal caregivers, and policymakers can use these findings to help patients cope with challenging conditions after myocardial infarction.

Objectives: This study aimed to explore the difficulties of the health system for supporting parents having children with thalassemia. Methods: This qualitative study was done for parents having children with thalassemia in Hajar Hospital of Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences in 2017. In this study, the approach for data collection was descriptive qualitative. Ten participants, including 5 mothers, 1 grandmother, 2 fathers, and 2 nurses interviewed in this study. Results: Analyzing the data indicated two categories. The first category needed to change the marriage laws of couples with thalassemia containing two subcategories as follows: marriage prevention of couples with thalassemia and prevention of childbirth. The second category involved with the drug crisis, containing three subcategories as follows: the lack of drugs, inability to provide drugs, and drug complications. Conclusions: Health authorities must take the necessary measures to provide the appropriate treatment and drugs for these patients. Also, there is a need for adequate laws and programs for couples to play a role in preventing childbirth with thalassemia.