JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY HEALTH RESEARCH
Year:2017 | Volume:6 | Issue:1|Papers Count:7

Introduction: Sleep is an essential part of life and is of utmost importance in preserving human health and performance. The quantity and quality of sleep can affect blood pressure. The objective of this paper was to determine the relationship of sleep quantity and quality with high blood pressure.Methods: This profile study utilized the data of Health Study Program in Yazd. The population contained 6964 adults in the age range of 20 to 70 years, selected using cluster sampling method. The data were analyzed using chi-squared (X2) and Logistic Regression tests via SPSS (ver. 18) software.Results: Generally, 50.3% of the participants were female, 28.6% of them had high blood pressure; 31.3% of men and 25.9% of women had high blood pressure. The lowest rate of blood pressure happened within participants with 20-29 years of age, i.e., 9.9%, while the highest rate was related to individuals of 60-69 years old, i.e., 49.6%. X2 test yielded significant results for sleep duration (p<0.001) and nightmare frequency (p=0.016). The adjusted chance of sleep duration, gender, age groups, educational levels, and body mass index (BMI) had significant effects on blood pressure (p<0.001). Half of the participants showed sleep dysfunctions in terms of quantity and quality, and one-third were likely to come down with high blood pressure.Conclusion: It can be concluded that the sleep quantity and quality of the studied people were not at a desirable level; it needs high attention. It can be maintained that the findings of the current study indicated the importance of paying attention to the quality and quantity of sleep in preventing the incidence of high blood pressure.

Introduction: Physical activity and healthy eating at an early age are two key elements in prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases. Therefore, regular physical activity is recommended to improve public health and to reduce the burden of diseases and medical costs in communities. The aim of this study was to determine the status of physical activity in Yazd high school students.Methods: A total number of 1018 male high school students participated in this cross-sectional study. They were permanent residents of Yazd city in the school year of 2015-2016. Multistage cluster classification and stratified sampling methods were applied to collect samples. A validated Persian standardized World Health Organization questionnaire (GSHS) was used as a data collection tool. After completing the questionnaire by students, data were analyzed by SPSS.Results: only 11.6% of participants reported physical activity for at least 60 minutes a day. Inert activities such as watching television or playing computer games for more than 2 hours during a typical day was reported by 531 participants (55%). Based on body mass index, 18.23 % of students were obese and 13.22 % were overweight.Discussion and conclusion: The results of this study suggest that the level of students' physical activities is low. Paying more attention to physical activity and designing curriculums that devote more hours for physical activities are recommended. Encouraging physical activity in leisure time and providing proper facilities for adolescents are further suggestions.

Introduction: In order to simplify the information exchange within the medical diagnosis process, a collaborative software agent’s framework is presented. The purpose of the framework is to allow the automated information exchange between different medicine specialists.Methods: This study presented architecture of a hybrid disease diagnosis system. The architecture employed a learning algorithm and used soft computing to build a medical knowledge base. These machine intelligences are combined in a complementary approach to overcome the weakness of each other. To evaluate the hybrid learning algorithm and compare it with other methods, 699 samples were used in each experiment, where 60% was for training, 20% was for cross validation, and 20% for testing.Results: The results were obtained from the experiments on the breast cancer dataset. Different methods of soft computing system were merged to create diagnostic software functionality. As it is shown in the structure, the system has the ability to learn and collect knowledge that can be used in the detection of new images. Currently, the system is at the design stage. The system is to evaluate the performance of hybrid learning algorithm. The preliminary results showed a better performance of this system than other methods. However, the results can be tested with hybrid system on larger data sets to improve hybrid learning algorithm.Conclusion: The purpose of this paper was to simplify the diagnosis process of a patient by splitting the medical domain concepts (e.g., causes, effects, symptoms, tests) in human body systems (e.g., respiratory, cardiovascular), though maintaining the holistic perspective through the links between common concepts.

Introduction: This research was meant to provide a model for COPD diagnosis and to classify the cases into phenotypes; General COPD, Chronic bronchitis, Emphysema, and the Asthmatic COPD using a Bayesian Network (BN).Methods: The model was constructed through developing the Bayesian Network structure and instantiating the parameters for each of the variables. In order to validate the achieved results, the same data set was applied to a neural network application using the Levenberge- Marquardt algorithm. Furthermore, a card Diag, a C++ application that enables graphical classification of COPD into phenotypes and depicts the relationships of COPD phenotypes was developed.Results: The results showed that a Bayesian Network can be successfully applied to develop a probabilistic model for diagnosis and classification of COPD cases into the corresponding phenotypes.Conclusions: A model that classifies COPD cases into phenotypes of general COPD, Chronic bronchitis, Emphysema, and Asthmatic COPD was successfully developed. Moreover, the achieved results also helped to represent graphical representations of COPD phenotypes and explained how the phenotypes relate to each other. It was also observed that COPD is mostly associated with people aged 40 years or older. Overall, smoking is the major cause of COPD.

Introduction: Drug abuse among adolescents potentially holds several negative consequences for the health and well-being of the youth. This theoretically based study explained predictability of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) on drug abuse related behaviors among adolescents.Methods: This descriptive study was conducted in Yazd City, Iran, in 2015 among 125 male adolescents in the age range of 11-29 years, recruited randomly. All data gathered by using self-report written questionnaires included attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, intention not to use drugs as theoretical constructs of TPB, and drug abuse related behaviors. Results: The results showed that 18% of participants were smoker, 97% of them did not have history of synthetic drug abuse by parents, and 6% of participants reported synthetic drug abuse by friends. Results of Chi-square test showed that there was a significant relationship between smoking and father's education, family size, history of synthetic drugs in parents, history of synthetic drugs in friends, and participants' job (P˃0.000). However, maternal education (P=682) and living with parents (P=729) did not have any significant relationship.Conclusions: The low prevalence of Drug abuse in this study in comparison with the existing statistics can attribute to lack of participants' reports.

Introduction: This is important to consider the health, social support, and marital satisfaction of drivers since they own one of the essential and stressful jobs in society. The purpose of this research was to investigate quality of life, marital satisfaction, and social support of the drivers referring to the cargo terminal of Yazd City.Methods: In order to collect data, 134 drivers in Yazd cargo terminal were selected. The ENRICH questionnaire of marital satisfaction, SF – 36 questionnaire, and social support questionnaire (SSQ) have been used as data collection tools. The collected data were then analyzed by Independent T test, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and Pearson correlation.Results: According to the results, the drivers' average age was 40.2±9.17 years old. The mean scores of marital satisfaction, quality of life, and social support were equal to 120.04±20.14 out of 175, 99.69±18.14 out of 149, and 15±4.76 out of 23, respectively. About 60.4 % of drivers were not satisfied with their jobs. There were significant relationships between weight and marital satisfaction (P=0.02), as well as between job satisfaction (P=0.003) (P=0.015) and income (P=0.047) (P=0.020), to social support and quality of life. Also, a strong significant positive relationship was observed in correlation coefficient between social support and two variables of quality of life and marital satisfaction (P=0.000).Conclusion: This can be argued that marital satisfaction, quality of life, and social support of the drivers are lower than the expected levels. Therefore, it can be concluded that physical and mental health of drivers can be effective on safety of roads; thereby it is necessary to improve their conditions in marital satisfaction, quality of life, and social support.

Introduction: Biological attack a phenomenon which has seriously started in the 20th- century and is expanding every day. Plague agent is one of factors listed as a biological weapon by the disarmament convention. Therefore, the risk of biological or bioterrorism applications is probable and serious. The purpose of this study was to update health professionals' information on plague and bioterrorism aspect of this disease.Methods: This article is a literature review written based on search on articles from library and internet resources (1990- 2016). Results: More than 2,000 species of bacteria have been identified in three main groups of bacillus (rod-shaped), cocci (round and oval), and spiral. But only about 100 of them are known as pathogens and Less than 10 species are used as biological agents for military application and one of them is plague agent. Yersinia pestis is a Gram negative, rod-shaped, anaerobic, member of the enterobacteriaceae family, and if be painted by Colors Wright, Giemsa or Leeson will be seen bipolar under a microscope.Conclusion: Nowadays, in spite of the progresses made in science and technology, human knowledge is relatively incapable to anticipate the time and place of biological attacks. Therefore, being prepared and ready for its unavoidable occurrence is necessary. So, regarding the importance and necessity of readiness, officials and experts have to make an effort and plan against these hazards.