International Journal of High Risk Behaviors and Addiction
Year:2014 | Volume:3 | Issue:4|Papers Count:9

Background: The use of smokeless tobacco is considered as a risk factor for oral cancer.Objectives: The current study aimed to chemically analyze, separate and measure the existing substances in a type of chewing tobacco.Materials and Methods: In the current descriptive study, the investigated sample was a type of smokeless tobacco, known as BT, manufactured in India. First steam distillation method and Clevenger machine were used to separate and extract the essential oil of the sample. The presence of the desired compounds was evaluated in the essential oil, using gas chromatography (GC) and then gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis.Results: Based on the results obtained by the applied technique, the presence of carcinogenic compounds, N-nitrosomethyl-vinylamine (162 mg/g), N-nitrosonornicotine (6.3 mg/g), and Acetaldehyde (117 mg/g) was confirmed in the sample.Conclusions: Chemical analysis of the sample confirmed the existence of carcinogenic compounds.

Background: Psychoactive substance use can cause a broad variety of mental health disorders and social health problems for the drug users, their family and society.Objectives: The Ministry of Health, Treatment, and Medical Education of Iran has recently proclaimed an estimated number of 2 million drug abusers and 200, 000 injecting drug users (IDUs).Patients and Methods: For data collection, the directory of mental, social health, and Addiction designed a questionnaire in cooperation with Drug Control Headquarters of Iran.Results: Among 402 IDUs patients, a large amount of them were male, single, and younger than 39 years. Regarding psychotic and somatic symptoms caused by methadone therapy, most of the participants had no problem with methadone maintenance treatment (MMT).Conclusions: There is a need to train health staff, and the community, concerning preventive measures, treatment, and reducing harm for substance drug users.

Context: Child dental neglect is a terrible tragedy with a high prevalence. Dealing with this issue is important regarding psychological and physical health policies. The current review was conducted to provide health professionals insight into the different aspects of child dental neglect as reported in previous literature.Evidence Acquisition: Our review was prepared through an electronic search using Pub Med, Science Direct, Medline, Google, Cochran Library, Google Scholar and EMBASE databases. Relevant papers published since 2000 until now in English, discussing child dental neglect were retrieved. Both original and review papers were included. Eligible articles were fully read by the author. A data form was used to record useful findings.Results: Distinguishing the direct and indirect signs of dental neglect is the first step for improvement of this matter. The dental team are the main professionals who can improve parental knowledge about the consequences of child dental neglect. Victims suffer from short and long-term adverse outcomes. Collaborative attempts need to be made by different health professionals to deal with this problem.Conclusions: Child dental neglect has many long-term impacts. The main professionals who are responsible for identification, intervention and treatment of child dental neglect are dental practitioners. However, other professionals cannot ignore this task. Finally, child dental neglect, despite its derivative outcomes, may be a presentation of a broader maltreatment.

Background: Illicit opiate use has an increasing incidence and prevalence, which increases mortality and morbidity, marginalization, and criminal behaviors, and causes major adverse effects on society.Objectives: This study aimed to investigate and follow the outcome of patients who underwent ultrarapid opiate detoxification (UROD) prospectively.Patients and Methods: In this randomized clinical trial, 64 patients who underwent UROD were evaluated. The opiate antagonist regimen of naloxone was administered intravenously under general anesthesia, and detoxification was confirmed by naloxone challenge test. All patients were cared in intensive care unit (ICU) for 24 hours, and oral naltrexone was prescribed the next day, after recovery and discharge. Patients were followed up for one month after the procedure. Relapse was considered if routine use of opiates (daily use for at least two weeks) was reported by the patient after detoxification. The data was analyzed by SPSS 16.5 and the study was performed using descriptive analysis and Chi square test.Results: All 64 participants were opiate-dependent males (ASA physical status of I or II) who aged over 18 years with a mean age of 31.11 ± 8.93 years at the time of UROD. One month after UROD, 48 patients (75%) reported relapse and 16 (25%) reported abstinence, however, four patients of the non-relapsed group reported one episode of opiate use. There was no significant difference between relapsed and non-relapsed patients regarding their marital status, level of education, and family history of opiate dependency (P>0.05).Conclusions: Although UROD by naloxone is a safe and effective method of detoxification, if used alone, it has a very high relapse rate in long term.

Background: There is a great deal of medical literature suggesting that substance use disorder is a serious clinical concern, affecting general population and associated with considerable economic, societal, and personal costs.Objectives: This study sought to clarify the relationship between early trauma, dissociative experience, and suicide ideation as predictive factors of active and passive addiction potential (A/PAP) in high-school students.Patients and Methods: Three hundred students with the mean age of 15.72 y were selected via multistage random sampling. All participants were asked to complete Iranian addiction potential scale, early trauma inventory, dissociative experiences scale, and Beck’s suicide ideation scale. Analyzing data was done using canonical correlation.Results: Structural coefficients showed that the pattern of high scores in active/passive A/PAP correlates with the pattern of high scores in early trauma, dissociative experience and suicide ideation. The findings of the study showed that the combination of low active/passive A/PAP can probably decrease the likelihood of early trauma, dissociative experience and suicide ideation.Conclusions: Early trauma, dissociative experience, and suicide ideation can predict active/passive A/PAP and explain the considerable variance of survival index.

Background: Victims of abuse comprise a significant proportion of all child psychiatric admissions, with an estimated 30% incidence of lifetime of physical and sexual abuse among child and adolescent outpatients, and as high as 55% among psychiatric inpatients.Objectives: The present study was conducted to examine the effects of therapeutic intervention and parent management training on parenting skill of abusive parents.Patients and Methods: The study population consisted of all children who were referred to Child Psychiatric and Pediatric Departments of Imam Hossein Hospital, Tehran, IR Iran diagnosed with child abuse. Children and their families were visited by a psychiatrist for psychiatric problems. Later, the necessary interventions were taken for the children. To study the effect of intervention, parents completed ‘Being a Parent and Parenting Scale’ before intervention, and then again, in the third and sixth months following the intervention. The interventions included 8 weekly parent management training sessions for all of the involved parents and additional pharmacologic and psychological interventions according to the subjects’ needs.Results: Participants included 73 children with the mean age of 6.9 ± 4.3 year, while the mean age of parents was 31.76 ± 6.52 year for the mothers and 38.07 ± 8.45 year for the fathers. General anxiety disorder (30.1%) and depression (27.4%) were the most common psychiatric disorders among mothers. In parenting scale, there were significant differences between the zero and third month in all subscales (P=0.008), but there was no significant difference in verbosity and overreactivity after 6 months. Laxness showed significant changes over the period (P=0.03). In viewing the ‘Being a Parent Scale’, there was no significant difference in satisfaction and competency subscales before and after the intervention.Conclusions: Therapeutic intervention and parent management training improves parenting skill of abusive parents, and this might lead to fewer incidents of abuse or neglect.

Background: Ecstasy is used to improve mood and cordiality, however, based on some reports, it is neurotoxic to human users.Objectives: Because of the euphoria induced by MDMA (3, 4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) on the users, its consumption is increasing in almost all countries. This study was carried out to determine the effects of ecstasy administration in rats’ blood sugar, lipids profile, and liver function tests.Materials and Methods: The experiment was performed using 50 mature Wistar-Albino male rats. The rats were divided into five groups (n=10). Sham control group (A), received tap water and ordinary rodent diet. The control (B) was administered saline but tests group C, D1, and D2 received single dose and multiple doses of MDMA, respectively. After experimental period, animals were deeply anesthetized by diethyl ether, sacrificed and the blood samples were collected for the evaluation of blood glucose, serum lipid and aspartate transaminase (AST), alanine transaminase (ALT), and alkaline phosphatase (ALK-P). Data were expressed as mean ± SD and statistical difference was considered significant at P<0.05.Results: In C group, the values of blood sugar (193.8 ± 11.6 mg/dL), low density lipoprotein (LDL) (19.2 ± 7.9 mg/dL), and cholesterol (76.1 ± 10.6 mg/dL), were significantly increased compared with those of control A and B (135 ± 12.7), (140 ± 18.8), and (45.4 ± 9.8), (49.8 ± 2.1) (49.4 ± 10.6) groups. However, aspartate transaminase (AST) and alanine transaminase (ALT) were significantly increased in groups D1 (145.8 ± 14.7 U/L), (91.1 ± 8.1 U/L), and D2 (159.4 ± 13.8 U/L) and (75.4 ± 7.8) compared with those of group A (107.2 ± 8.1), (45.4 ± 9.8), B (79.8 ± 12.1), (49.8 ± 2.1), and C (115.6 ± 17.5), (52.1 ± 7.6 U/L). Cholesterol and LDL increased in groups C and D compared with group A.Conclusions: These results indicated that chronic administration of MDMA affects liver as well as lipoprotein profile in male rats. The exact mechanism of action needs further investigation.

Djinnati is a culture-bound syndrome in Baluchestan, Iran. Experts believe that dissociation theory is more suitable for providing a psychopathological description of this syndrome in this region. In addition, they highlight the need for investigating its pathology, particularly the role of factors such as traumatic and abuse experiences during childhood…

Background: Suicide is a growing public health problem all over the world. Understanding the prevalence of suicide and its correlates is of great importance in planning programs to reduce the risk in different societies.Objectives: The present study was conducted to assess the epidemiology of suicide and its associated risk factors in Sistan and Balouchestan Province, southeast of Iran.Patients and Methods: We investigated a total of 369 suicide cases admitted to the emergency department of Zahedan Khatam- Al- Anbia hospital between March 2010 and February 2012. Data were collected from the hospital information system (HIS) using a semi-structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and chi-square tests were used to identify the factors associated with suicidal behaviors.Results: A greater proportion of the study subjects (65%) were female. They were more likely to be young (43.5% in the age group of 16 to 25 years) and illiterate or have a primary school education (20.9% and 48.8%, respectively). Housewives and self-employed individuals and those with a low or medium income dominated the suicide cases. The most common method of suicide was burning (53.4%) followed by drug ingestion (23.8%). One third of the suicide cases occurred during spring. The case fatality rate was 49.6% and it was significantly associated with low income, summer time suicides, burning as a method of suicide.Conclusions: This study highlights the burden of suicide and itspotential socio-demographic risk factors in Sistan and Blouchestan Province. This information has an implication for planning the preventive measures, policy making and future research.