Journal of Ardabil University of Medical Sciences
Year:2010 | Volume:9 | Issue:4 (34)|Papers Count:13

Background and objectives: Rubella is a mild viral infectious disease usually occurs subclinically without a serious complication, but if occur during pregnancy, specially the first trimester, its etiologic agent can transmit and invade to fetus causing congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) or fetal death. In order to prevent disease and its congenital complications, Rubella immunization is currently done in many countries. Nearly 20% of girls at marriage were susceptible to rubella in 2003. That is why early all Iranians at the age of 5-25 years old were vaccinated against rubella and the vaccine was included in the compulsory immunization, MMR afterwards.Methods: This cross-sectional and analitical study was carried out on 140 girls who attended at a marriage consultancy center in Kermanshah city. Annually, about 10000 girls attend Rafattieh Health Center for pre-marriage laboratory tests in Kermanshah. It was expected that rate of sero-positive Rubella increase from 80 % in 1999 to above 90 % at the study time after mass and national vaccination. So considering 95% of confidence. All Samples were tested using ELISA serologic method.Results: Antibody positivity and immunity against rubella was seen in 99.3% (139 out of 140 vaccinated girls), while it was 80% according to the similar study conducted on 240 unvaccinated girls at the same place in 1999. Comparing these two studies showed that attack rate (sero-negativity) has been decreased from 17.08% in unvaccinated to 0.71% in vaccinated ones with a confidence interval of 0.01- 0.30 (p<0.01). The vaccine efficacy is estimated 96%.Conclusion: Relationship between immunity, age, education and history of rubella-like illness, could not be assessed because only 1 (<0.1%) of 140 vaccinated girls was not immune. In our previous studey in 1999 we had recommended to screen for susceptibility to rubella before marriage, which is no longer required since more than 99% of vaccinated girls showed immuninty at the time of marriage. However, as sustainability of immunity after rubella vaccination is usually less than immunity due to illness, we recommend screening for rubella protective antibody every few years.

Background and objectives: Long term exposure to high levels of cement dust is one of the most important environmental risk factors in cement industries that adversely affect employee's respiratory system. Provided that achieving sustainable development mainly relies on healthy workers, this study aimed at assessing cement dust concentration and its free SiO2 content in an Iranian Portland Cement Industry.Methods: In a cross-sectional study, airborne dust levels was investigated by collecting 64 personal and 35 environmental samples at both inhalable and respirable dust sizes. Dust concentrations were determined by deploying personal samplers in the breathing zone of workers. SiO2 fractions were also measured in 4 samples collected from different part of the factory.Results: Arithmetic average concentrations of inhalable and respirable dust in personal sampling campaign were 58 and 13 mg m-3, respectively. Respective values for inhalable and respirable dust in environmental sampling campaign were 154 and 27 mg m-3. Dust concentrations in 90% of environmental samples and 80% of personal samples exceeded those occupational exposure limit values set for inert dusts i.e. Portland Cement. The average free SiO2 fraction in analyzed samples was 2.86% varying from 2.33% in "packing and loading" area to 3.67 % in "raw mill" section.Conclusion: Free SiO2 fraction as well as the concentrations of cement dust in this study is much higher than those of occupational exposure limit proposed by Iranian Technical Committee of Occupational Health.

Background and objectives: Suicide is an important problem for social safety and health. This phenomenon is costly for remedy and also is against Islamic values and ethics. Recognizing some risk factors of forecasting after epidemiologic studies on people whom attempted to suicide could prepare and present outlines and proper guides for preventing by health and social planners. This research is purposed on suicide epidemiologic study to obtain full and enough data about deceased people by suicide in Ardebil province. Methods: The subjects of this descriptive, analytic and sectional research were 64 deceased people by suicide from 2003-2008, who were registered in Bualy, Fatemu, Alavi Hospital and Forensic Medicine of Ardabil Province. The Data was gathered by a researcher designed questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS software. Results: The highest rate of suicide belonged to age rank of 15-24 years (43.8%), which occurred in female (62.5%), married people (57.8%) urban society (65.6%) and patient without past chronic physical illness or psychiatric history and without pre-attempt suicide. Self poisoning by drugs and toxins were the most common used method in this case (90.6%). Orderly the most common used drugs were Organo-Phosphorate Toxins, Tricyclic Antidepressants and Aluminum Phosphid.Conclusion: This research is indicating various risk factors such as sex, age, marriage status, residing place of society and easy access to drugs and toxins. According to obtained results, it is better or proper to accomplished related education and training of preventation and interference of mental health in second and third decades of life with allocation of much time for females (especially married). We suggest paying more attention to education, preventation, diagnosis and treatment of poisoning especially poisoning by most common drugs and toxins.

Background & Objectives: Pneumonia is one of the most fatal infectious syndromes with various etiologies. Mycoplasmas require special therapeutic approach as they are not sensitive to betalactams such as penicillin.Regarding lack of comprehensive studies relating to mycoplasmas' part in pneumonia in Iran, the current study was conducted.Methods: This is a descriptive study performed on 80 patients diagnosed with community acquired pneumonia and hospitalized in infectious diseases ward of Immam Khomeini Hospital (Ardebil, Iran) in over a one year time span.Blood samples for titration of anti-mycoplasmal IgGs and IgMs were taken from all patients.Results: Out of 80 hospitalized patients 40 were men and 40 were women. Mean age of the studied group was 59.91 years and 76.6% of patients lived in urban areas. We observed positive IgM in 5 patients (6.3%) and positive IgM in 20 patients (25%). Etiologic cause of 6% of hospitalized patiants with community acquired pneumonia was mycoplasmal. We could not specify any particular clinical finding assisting to differentiate mycoplasmal pneumonias from other types of pneumonia. All the patients with positive IgM titrations had positive agglutination titers of 1.16 or 1.32, therefor under any circustances that performing of IgM titration is not possible, agglutination test can be used as an alternative.Conclusion: Approximately 6.7% of community acquired pneumonias in adults' infectious diseases ward of Imam Khomeini Hospital, were etiologically related to mycoplasmas. Therefore, regarding limitations for PCR analysis and antibody titration, administration of antibiotics with antimycoplasmal properties is necessary.

Background and objectives: Employed pregnant women have to do their jobs in addition to fulfill their house wife role and behavior, while changes physical and psychological change and needs of pregnant women in home and work place cause some problem for them. Marital satisfactions is one of the criteria’s of mental health, that employment and marital intimacy are it’s influential factors; it is different in various societies and are influenced by personal and social characters of community. This study was conducted to compare marital satisfaction and intimacy in employed and unemployed pregnant women in Ardabil.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 93 employed and 93 unemployed pregnant women referred to health and treatment centers of Ardebil University of Medical Science, and private clinics of Ardabil. We gathered data by an information form, Enrich Marital Satisfactions Questionnaires and Bagarozi Couple Intimacy Questionnaires. Validity of questionnaires assessed through validity of content and their reliability measured by Cronbach a. Questionnaires were filled by pregnant women. The data analyzed by SPSS 16 soft ware using T-Test, Man-vitny, chi-square, Correlation coefficient, variance analysis, and LSD tests).Results: There was no significant difference between mean of marital satisfaction and general intimacy in employed and unemployed pregnant women. p>0.05. There was significant correlation between intimacy and satisfaction expect body intimacy (p<0.01). There was significant difference between marital satisfactions of pregnancy in different trimester. This difference was significant between first and last trimester. It was not significant between first & second & third trimester. 69.9% of unemployed pregnant women and 66.7% of employed pregnant women had relative and medium marital satisfaction and 93.5% of unemployed pregnant women and 94.6% of employed pregnant women had medium intimacy.Conclusion: It seems that employment had no effect on marital satisfaction and intimacy. Considering that most samples had medium intimacy satisfaction, educational programs and consulting is recommended.

Background and objectives: Co-morbidity of psychiatric disorders and substance abuse disorder have extensive effects and is accompanied by poorer prognosis. Treatment of this population should be proportionate to their needs. Current study aims to survey personality disorders among referrers to the addiction treatment center, thereby may contributes in achieving a more comprehensive view on encountering them and their treatment. Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive study, number of 100 persons with substance abuse disorder were selected by convenient sampling method from referrers to the Reference Center of Addiction Treatment of Ardabil province in 2008. Necessary information was gathered by researcher designed questionnaire (including demographic information) and Million's questionnaire of Personality Disorder. And gathered data were extracted and analyzed by SPSS Software.Results: Results analysis showed that the most observed associated disorders in the studied subjects was the Antisocial Personality disorder (0.54%) and Borderline, Histrionic and Narcissistic Personality disorders were located at next ranks, respectively. There was no significant relationship between used drug type and duration of usage to specific personality (p>0.05). There was significant statistical difference between multi-drug and one-drug abusers addicts, from view point of having or not having personality disorder (p<0.05).Conclusion: Results analysis showed high co-morbidity of personality disorders and drug abuse among addicts (84 %) and lower rate of personality disorders among persons with one drug compared with multi-drug abuse.

Background and objective: Cystic Echinococcosis (CE) is a cosmopolitan and prevalent zoonosis in the world. It caused by larva of Echinococcus genus species. CE is medically and economically one of the important parasitic zoonoses in Iran especially Moghan Plain. So far no survey was conducted to determine the rate of CE in this region.Method: The subjects of this descriptive- analytic study were people of the Moghan plain. The prevalence of the disease was determined with serologic examination using ELISA test. ELISA was carried out using HCF-Ag that obtained from a diseased sheep. Household information was recorded in questionnaires before collecting serum samples. The results were analyzed by SPSS using statistical tests.Result: Out of 2008 samples, 1267 were female and 734 were male. At all 9.2 % (184) of sera were found to be positive. Conclusion: This survey determined more prevalence of Cystic Echinococcosis in women (%10) than men (%7.9) and infection is more in places that keep much Dogs.

Background and objectives: During the last years the effects of pulsative electromagnetic fields have been studied in the human and animals nervous system. The using of these fields in today living has caused worriment in safety of human. Stress causes very problems in behavior and function of biological systems. In this survey the effects of electromagnetic fields on stress behaviors of rats have been studied.Methods: In this study we aimed to investigate the effects of electromagnetic fields with 700 milli Gauss currency produced by triangle electrical currents with low (10 Hz) and high (110 kHz) frequencies on stress behaviors in 60 adult, male Wistar rats. The rats were divided to two groups of control and test. The animals were exposed to the field for 80 minutes and in order to evaluate the possible effect of electromagnetic fields the Tail pinch (T.P.) test was conducted. The results were analyzed using statistical tests. Results: Analyzing of the results of response time and stress behavior by T-test. In the group exposed electromagnetic fields of triangular low waves (10 Hz) for 80 min the results were meaningful (p<0.05). The response and stressed behavior with this field is decreased very much. The results of two groups after 80 min under this field that have a difference in frequency showed that effects of frequency in behavior was meaningless. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that electromagnetic fields produce anti-stress effect in rats. The radio waves (A.W) have higher effects.

Background and objectives: Leptospirosis is a very common zoonosis in the world. Early diagnosis of leptospirosis is critical because just early treatment will be effective. It's culture is very slow and serological assays are not applicable because of lack of antibodies in the first week of the disease, therefore PCR is the only option for the early diagnosis. In this study, sensitivity and accuracy of a non-quantitative conventional PCR for diagnosis of leptospirose in first week sera of patients, is evaluated.Methods: Seventy first week sera sample of patients with clinical diagnosis of leptospirosis which were negative in MAT but positive for the second time after one weeks (seroconversion) were selected and studied.Results: We observed twenty four positive sera in PCR test. Sensitivity of the test was 74.5% and accuracy was 100 bacteria /ml. Conclusion: Result of our study shows that PCR is the only choice for the early diagnosis of Leptospirosis while other assays are not applicable but its sensitivity is low.

Inguinal hernia is a common disease of middle age and older. This case is one of huge and rare inguinal hernia with the size of 30×30×35 cm. A sixty years old man was referred to hospital with a big mass in left inguinal area and problem of walking and wearing of clothes. At physical examination, a massive left-sided inguinal hernia was observed. The surgery operation was carried out with the technique of Bassini and using of mesh; the tissues of inside sac include omentum and gut returned into the abdomen manually. The patient was followed for 3-6 months. Similar cases were reported from India and Japan previously.