BACKGROUND Vaccination has been one of the most successful and cost-effective public health inter... more BACKGROUND Vaccination has been one of the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions in the last century and has saved millions of lives. In 1984, the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) was launched in Iran as one of the main components of Primary Health Care (PHC). OBJECTIVES We aimed to investigate the burden of four vaccine-preventable diseases from 1990 to 2010 in Iran. METHODS GBD study 2010 includes death rates, Years of Life Lost (YLLs), Years Lived with Disability (YLDs) and Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs). YLLs is calculated through multiplying the number of deaths in each age group by a reference life expectancy for the same age group, while YLDs can be obtained from the prevalence of a disease multiplied by the disability weight (DW) for the same disease. The sum of these two indices yields DALYs. In the present study, we tried to produce new graphs and explain more about Iran results. We also describe the GBD study limitations. RESULTS R...
Heart failure places a significant burden on patients and health systems in high-income countries... more Heart failure places a significant burden on patients and health systems in high-income countries. However, information about its burden in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is scant. We thus set out to review both published and unpublished information on the presentation, causes, management, and outcomes of heart failure in LMICs. Medline, Embase, Global Health Database, and World Health Organization regional databases were searched for studies from LMICs published between 1 January 1995 and 30 March 2014. Additional unpublished data were requested from investigators and international heart failure experts. We identified 42 studies that provided relevant information on acute hospital care (25 LMICs; 232,550 patients) and 11 studies on the management of chronic heart failure in primary care or outpatient settings (14 LMICs; 5,358 patients). The mean age of patients studied ranged from 42 y in Cameroon and Ghana to 75 y in Argentina, and mean age in studies largely correlated ...
In 2011, over 10.1 million people were held in prisons around the world. HIV prevalence is elevat... more In 2011, over 10.1 million people were held in prisons around the world. HIV prevalence is elevated in prison and this is due to the over representation of people who inject drugs (PWID). Yet HIV prevention programs for PWID are scarce in the prison setting. With a high proportion of drug users and few prevention programs, HIV transmission occurs and sometimes at an alarming rate. This commentary focuses primarily on drug users in prison; their risk behaviours and levels of infection. It also comments on the transmission of HIV including outbreaks and the efforts to prevent transmission within the prison setting. The spread of HIV in prison has substantial public health implications as virtually all prisoners return to the community. HIV prevention and treatment strategies known to be effective in community settings, such as methadone maintenance treatment, needle and syringe programs, condoms and antiretroviral therapy should be provided to prisoners as a matter of urgency.
Background In Iran, trends in breast cancer incidence and mortality have generally been monitored... more Background In Iran, trends in breast cancer incidence and mortality have generally been monitored at national level. The purpose of this study is to examine province-level disparities in age-standardised breast cancer incidence versus mortality from 2000 to 2010 and their association with socioeconomic status. Methods In this study, data from Iran’s national cancer and death registry systems, and covariates from census and household expenditure surveys were used. We estimated the age-standardised incidence and mortality rates in women aged more than 30 years for all 31 provinces in the consecutive time intervals 2000–2003, 2004–2007 and 2008–2010 using a Bayesian spatial model. Results Mean age-standardised breast cancer incidence across provinces increased over time from 15.0 per 100,000 people (95% credible interval 12.0,18.3) in 2000–2003 to 39.6 (34.5,45.1) in 2008–2010. The mean breast cancer mortality rate declined from 10.9 (8.3,13.8) to 9.9 (7.5,12.5) deaths per 100,000 peop...
BACKGROUND Cancer is one of the most common non-communicable diseases in both sexes and a major c... more BACKGROUND Cancer is one of the most common non-communicable diseases in both sexes and a major cause of disability and death around the world, as well as in Iran. The aim of the present manuscript is to report the results of the Global Burden of Disease study 2010 (the GBD 2010) to compare the results with the other similar findings. The paper also discusses the existing deficiencies of the GBD study. Our aim was to describe and criticize the attributed burden of cancers according to the GBD results by sex and age. METHODS The GBD 2010 has profited from 100 collaborators worldwide and provides a vast network of data on health outcomes, vital registries, and population surveys. The GBD has used various scientific-approved methods to estimate important health statuses like death rates, life expectancy, and healthy adjusted life expectancy, disability-adjusted life years, years of living lost due to premature death and years of life with disabilities. In the present study, we extracte...
OBJECTIVES To evaluate the HIV/AIDS burden in Iran from 1980 to 2010 using the Global Burden of D... more OBJECTIVES To evaluate the HIV/AIDS burden in Iran from 1980 to 2010 using the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010). METHODS The burden of HIV/AIDS in Iran was obtained from a systematic study from 1990 to 2010 by the GBD team. The GBD 2010 disability weights were used to calculate the HIV/AIDS Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY) based on the HIV prevalence reported by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimation. Mortality data were obtained from the vital registration and statistics system of Iran. In the current study, the results are discussed, and the potential solutions are provided for observed deficiencies. RESULTS HIV/AIDS-related DALYs (3.6 per 100,000 in 1990, and 154 per 100,000 in 2010) and death (0.07 per 100,000 in 1990, and 3 per 100,000 in 2010) had increased in Iran from 1990 to 2010. The majority of individuals who died of HIV were between 15 to 49 years old. The estimated rank of HIV/AIDS burden compared with the burden of other le...
BACKGROUND Estimating the burden of diseases, injuries and major risk factors is necessary for ad... more BACKGROUND Estimating the burden of diseases, injuries and major risk factors is necessary for adopting appropriate health policies in every country, and this paper aims to explain the study protocol of national and sub-national burden of breast cancer in Iran from 1990 to 2013. METHODS We will perform a systematic review of the confirmed databases and literature to gather data on breast cancer epidemiology in Iran. The definitions, data sources, organizing the team, methods of data gathering and data generating will be explained in this paper. The methodology of estimating the trend of prevalence, years of life lost due to premature death (YLLs), years of life lost due to disability (YLDs) and disability-adjusted life years lost (DALYs) of breast cancer by age groups, provinces and probable inequalities will be explained. We will tackle possible data problems due to the lack of data points on provinces and years and also geographical misalignment by using two advanced statistical m...
Norjizak is a new drug abused in the past few years in Iran with symptoms and complications disti... more Norjizak is a new drug abused in the past few years in Iran with symptoms and complications distinct from other common forms of drug and characterized by higher rate of mortality. The present study aims to analyze the chemical components of this substance. Five samples were obtained from abusers referring from different areas of Tehran to a treatment clinic. All samples were 2 ml vials with yellowish fluid. Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) was performed first to analyze the samples semi-quantitatively and the quantitative levels of components were then explored using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). TLC revealed steroid (in form of betamethasone), heroin, codeine, morphine and thebaine in all five samples. Four samples contained acetaminophen and two samples contained caffeine. None of them contained amphetamine, benzodiazepine, tricyclic antidepressant, aspirin, barbiturates, tramadol and buprenorphine. HPLC revealed that heroin, codeine, morphine and thebaine constitu...
BACKGROUND Causes of death statistics provide crucial health intelligence in national and interna... more BACKGROUND Causes of death statistics provide crucial health intelligence in national and international communities. An efficient death registration system provides reliable information for health policy system. In many developing countries, death registration systems face a degree of misclassification and incompleteness. There are many impediments to putting an estimate of cause-specific death rates. Addressing those challenges could prevent misleading results. METHODS Our data was collected by Ministry of Health and Medical Education, Tehran and Isfahan cemeteries from 1995 to 2010. After converting ICD codes of Iran's death registration into GBD codes, 170 underlying causes of deaths were recognized in the available data. A wide range of methods were applied for preparing the data. We used several statistical models to estimate mortality rates in age-sex-province groups for all causes of deaths. The considerable number of combinations for age, sex, cause of death, year, and p...
Iranian journal of allergy, asthma, and immunology, 2016
In this study, we aimed to conduct a meta-analysis on the results of eligible studies to estimate... more In this study, we aimed to conduct a meta-analysis on the results of eligible studies to estimate the prevalence of asthma, COPD, and Chronic bronchitis in Iran. International and Iranian databases including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Iranmedex, and scientific information database (SID) were searched for population-based studies that had reported the prevalence of asthma and COPD from 1990 to 2015. We conducted the meta-analysis using metaprop application of Stata statistical software. I-Squared was used for calculating heterogeneity among the studies. To determine causes of heterogeneity, subgroup analysis and meta-regression method were used. Based on the results of random effect method, the overall prevalence of asthma ever was 4.56% (3.76%-5.36%) among men while it was 4.17% (3.42%-4.91%) among women. Pooled prevalence of current asthma was 7.95% while confidence interval changed from 5.85% to 10.06% (men 5.83% (2.75%-8.92%), women 9.13% (3.35%-14.94%)). Also based on the r...
Background In estimating the global burden of cancer, adolescents and young adults with cancer ar... more Background In estimating the global burden of cancer, adolescents and young adults with cancer are often overlooked, despite being a distinct subgroup with unique epidemiology, clinical care needs, and societal impact. Comprehensive estimates of the global cancer burden in adolescents and young adults (aged 15-39 years) are lacking. To address this gap, we analysed results from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019, with a focus on the outcome of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), to inform global cancer control measures in adolescents and young adults. Methods Using the GBD 2019 methodology, international mortality data were collected from vital registration systems, verbal autopsies, and population-based cancer registry inputs modelled with mortality-to-incidence ratios (MIRs). Incidence was computed with mortality estimates and corresponding MIRs. Prevalence estimates were calculated using modelled survival and multiplied by disability we...
BACKGROUND Inequity in megacities is a real concern in public health perspective. Tehran is a meg... more BACKGROUND Inequity in megacities is a real concern in public health perspective. Tehran is a megacity with more than 8 million population that is divided into 22 regions (counties) with considerable diversity in socioeconomic status. On the other hand, spatial cluster detection is an important tool in disease surveillance to identify areas of elevated risk and to generate hypotheses about disease or mortality etiology. The present research aims to identify high or low-risk clusters for five non-communicable leading causes of death in 22 regions of Tehran province. METHODS Cause-specific mortality rates were extracted from Behesht-e-Zahra registry system for Tehran province in 2011. Spatial scan statistic as a most common method in spatial cluster detection was chosen to detect clusters with elevated risk of death. Given the observed and expected number death in each region, a log likelihood ratio (LLR) criterion was used to test whether a cluster is significant. RESULT Two high-ris...
OBJECTIVES Health-related quality of life after kidney transplant in adolescents is a major conce... more OBJECTIVES Health-related quality of life after kidney transplant in adolescents is a major concern; nevertheless, there is a paucity of data on the variables that have an effect on it. This study evaluated the extent to which socioeconomic, clinical, and psychological characteristics explain the variance in the health-related quality of life of adolescent Iranian kidney transplant recipients. MATERIALS AND METHODS Into a hierarchical regression analysis, the cross-sectional socioeconomic, clinical, and psychological characteristics were entered among 55 adolescent Iranian kidney transplant recipients. RESULTS The relative predictive power of socioeconomic, clinical, and psychological variables with respect to health-related quality of life was 21.8% (P = .088), 21.2% (P = .014), and 27.6% (P = .001). CONCLUSIONS Psychological factors had a greater relative predictive power in postrenal transplant health-related quality of life of adolescents than did socioeconomic and clinical char...
BACKGROUND The present study describes the epidemiological status of sexually transmitted infecti... more BACKGROUND The present study describes the epidemiological status of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Iran based on the Global Burden of Disease study 2010 (the GBD 2010), and compares this with those of other neighboring countries. METHODS The burden of STIs from 1990 to 2010 in Iran was derived from a systematic study, namely the GBD 2010, which was conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Using a model-based estimation, Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) were calculated on the basis of the prevalence of STIs. The GBD 2010 used disability weights, and a mortality rate that was obtained from the vital registration system of Iran. We review the results of the GBD 2010 estimations for STIs in Iran. RESULTS The trend of DALYs attributable to STIs (107.3 and 26.47 per 100,000 people in 1990 and 2010, respectively) and deaths (1.13 and 0.12 per 100,000 people in 1990 and 2010, respectively) decreased dramatically in Iran during the last two decad...
Background and Aim: Dichotic listening means presentation of two different auditory stimuli to ea... more Background and Aim: Dichotic listening means presentation of two different auditory stimuli to each ear simultaneously. This study deals with the development of Persian version of Bergen dichotic listening test and its preliminary results on auditory attention and language laterality in adults with normal hearing. Methods: Persian version of the Bergen dichotic listening test was instructed by six consonant-vowel syllables to evaluate three conditions of non-forced attention, attention to right and attention to left ears separately. Then, it was performed on 54 right-handed young adults with normal hearing and the mean age of 23.24 (SD=2.78) years from both genders. Results: Frequency of correct response in the right ear was higher significantly in two conditions of non-forced attention (83.3%) and attention to the right ear (98.1%), and also was higher significantly in the left ear (-79.6%) in attention to the left (p<0.0001). Laterality index was 31.33% in non-forced attention,...
Clinical testing of children in schools is challenging, with economic implications limiting its f... more Clinical testing of children in schools is challenging, with economic implications limiting its frequent use as a monitoring tool of the risks assumed by children and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, a wastewater based epidemiology approach has been used to monitor 16 schools (10 primary, 5 secondary and 1 post-16 and further education for a total of 17 sites) in England. A total of 296 samples over 9 weeks have been analysed for N1 and E genes using qPCR methods. Of the samples returned, 47.3% were positive for one or both genes with a frequency of detection in line with the respective community. WBE offers a promising low cost, non-invasive approach for supplementing clinical testing and can offer longitudinal insights that are impractical with traditional clinical testing.
Background The sustainable development goals (SDGs) aim to end HIV/AIDS as a public health threat... more Background The sustainable development goals (SDGs) aim to end HIV/AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. Understanding the current state of the HIV epidemic and its change over time is essential to this effort. This study assesses the current sex-specific HIV burden in 204 countries and territories and measures progress in the control of the epidemic. Methods To estimate age-specific and sex-specific trends in 48 of 204 countries, we extended the Estimation and Projection Package Age-Sex Model to also implement the spectrum paediatric model. We used this model in cases where age and sex specific HIV-seroprevalence surveys and antenatal care-clinic sentinel surveillance data were available. For the remaining 156 of 204 locations, we developed a cohort-incidence bias adjustment to derive incidence as a function of cause-of-death data from vital registration systems. The incidence was input to a custom Spectrum model. To assess progress, we measured the percentage change in incident ...
BACKGROUND Vaccination has been one of the most successful and cost-effective public health inter... more BACKGROUND Vaccination has been one of the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions in the last century and has saved millions of lives. In 1984, the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) was launched in Iran as one of the main components of Primary Health Care (PHC). OBJECTIVES We aimed to investigate the burden of four vaccine-preventable diseases from 1990 to 2010 in Iran. METHODS GBD study 2010 includes death rates, Years of Life Lost (YLLs), Years Lived with Disability (YLDs) and Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs). YLLs is calculated through multiplying the number of deaths in each age group by a reference life expectancy for the same age group, while YLDs can be obtained from the prevalence of a disease multiplied by the disability weight (DW) for the same disease. The sum of these two indices yields DALYs. In the present study, we tried to produce new graphs and explain more about Iran results. We also describe the GBD study limitations. RESULTS R...
Heart failure places a significant burden on patients and health systems in high-income countries... more Heart failure places a significant burden on patients and health systems in high-income countries. However, information about its burden in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is scant. We thus set out to review both published and unpublished information on the presentation, causes, management, and outcomes of heart failure in LMICs. Medline, Embase, Global Health Database, and World Health Organization regional databases were searched for studies from LMICs published between 1 January 1995 and 30 March 2014. Additional unpublished data were requested from investigators and international heart failure experts. We identified 42 studies that provided relevant information on acute hospital care (25 LMICs; 232,550 patients) and 11 studies on the management of chronic heart failure in primary care or outpatient settings (14 LMICs; 5,358 patients). The mean age of patients studied ranged from 42 y in Cameroon and Ghana to 75 y in Argentina, and mean age in studies largely correlated ...
In 2011, over 10.1 million people were held in prisons around the world. HIV prevalence is elevat... more In 2011, over 10.1 million people were held in prisons around the world. HIV prevalence is elevated in prison and this is due to the over representation of people who inject drugs (PWID). Yet HIV prevention programs for PWID are scarce in the prison setting. With a high proportion of drug users and few prevention programs, HIV transmission occurs and sometimes at an alarming rate. This commentary focuses primarily on drug users in prison; their risk behaviours and levels of infection. It also comments on the transmission of HIV including outbreaks and the efforts to prevent transmission within the prison setting. The spread of HIV in prison has substantial public health implications as virtually all prisoners return to the community. HIV prevention and treatment strategies known to be effective in community settings, such as methadone maintenance treatment, needle and syringe programs, condoms and antiretroviral therapy should be provided to prisoners as a matter of urgency.
Background In Iran, trends in breast cancer incidence and mortality have generally been monitored... more Background In Iran, trends in breast cancer incidence and mortality have generally been monitored at national level. The purpose of this study is to examine province-level disparities in age-standardised breast cancer incidence versus mortality from 2000 to 2010 and their association with socioeconomic status. Methods In this study, data from Iran’s national cancer and death registry systems, and covariates from census and household expenditure surveys were used. We estimated the age-standardised incidence and mortality rates in women aged more than 30 years for all 31 provinces in the consecutive time intervals 2000–2003, 2004–2007 and 2008–2010 using a Bayesian spatial model. Results Mean age-standardised breast cancer incidence across provinces increased over time from 15.0 per 100,000 people (95% credible interval 12.0,18.3) in 2000–2003 to 39.6 (34.5,45.1) in 2008–2010. The mean breast cancer mortality rate declined from 10.9 (8.3,13.8) to 9.9 (7.5,12.5) deaths per 100,000 peop...
BACKGROUND Cancer is one of the most common non-communicable diseases in both sexes and a major c... more BACKGROUND Cancer is one of the most common non-communicable diseases in both sexes and a major cause of disability and death around the world, as well as in Iran. The aim of the present manuscript is to report the results of the Global Burden of Disease study 2010 (the GBD 2010) to compare the results with the other similar findings. The paper also discusses the existing deficiencies of the GBD study. Our aim was to describe and criticize the attributed burden of cancers according to the GBD results by sex and age. METHODS The GBD 2010 has profited from 100 collaborators worldwide and provides a vast network of data on health outcomes, vital registries, and population surveys. The GBD has used various scientific-approved methods to estimate important health statuses like death rates, life expectancy, and healthy adjusted life expectancy, disability-adjusted life years, years of living lost due to premature death and years of life with disabilities. In the present study, we extracte...
OBJECTIVES To evaluate the HIV/AIDS burden in Iran from 1980 to 2010 using the Global Burden of D... more OBJECTIVES To evaluate the HIV/AIDS burden in Iran from 1980 to 2010 using the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010). METHODS The burden of HIV/AIDS in Iran was obtained from a systematic study from 1990 to 2010 by the GBD team. The GBD 2010 disability weights were used to calculate the HIV/AIDS Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY) based on the HIV prevalence reported by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimation. Mortality data were obtained from the vital registration and statistics system of Iran. In the current study, the results are discussed, and the potential solutions are provided for observed deficiencies. RESULTS HIV/AIDS-related DALYs (3.6 per 100,000 in 1990, and 154 per 100,000 in 2010) and death (0.07 per 100,000 in 1990, and 3 per 100,000 in 2010) had increased in Iran from 1990 to 2010. The majority of individuals who died of HIV were between 15 to 49 years old. The estimated rank of HIV/AIDS burden compared with the burden of other le...
BACKGROUND Estimating the burden of diseases, injuries and major risk factors is necessary for ad... more BACKGROUND Estimating the burden of diseases, injuries and major risk factors is necessary for adopting appropriate health policies in every country, and this paper aims to explain the study protocol of national and sub-national burden of breast cancer in Iran from 1990 to 2013. METHODS We will perform a systematic review of the confirmed databases and literature to gather data on breast cancer epidemiology in Iran. The definitions, data sources, organizing the team, methods of data gathering and data generating will be explained in this paper. The methodology of estimating the trend of prevalence, years of life lost due to premature death (YLLs), years of life lost due to disability (YLDs) and disability-adjusted life years lost (DALYs) of breast cancer by age groups, provinces and probable inequalities will be explained. We will tackle possible data problems due to the lack of data points on provinces and years and also geographical misalignment by using two advanced statistical m...
Norjizak is a new drug abused in the past few years in Iran with symptoms and complications disti... more Norjizak is a new drug abused in the past few years in Iran with symptoms and complications distinct from other common forms of drug and characterized by higher rate of mortality. The present study aims to analyze the chemical components of this substance. Five samples were obtained from abusers referring from different areas of Tehran to a treatment clinic. All samples were 2 ml vials with yellowish fluid. Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) was performed first to analyze the samples semi-quantitatively and the quantitative levels of components were then explored using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). TLC revealed steroid (in form of betamethasone), heroin, codeine, morphine and thebaine in all five samples. Four samples contained acetaminophen and two samples contained caffeine. None of them contained amphetamine, benzodiazepine, tricyclic antidepressant, aspirin, barbiturates, tramadol and buprenorphine. HPLC revealed that heroin, codeine, morphine and thebaine constitu...
BACKGROUND Causes of death statistics provide crucial health intelligence in national and interna... more BACKGROUND Causes of death statistics provide crucial health intelligence in national and international communities. An efficient death registration system provides reliable information for health policy system. In many developing countries, death registration systems face a degree of misclassification and incompleteness. There are many impediments to putting an estimate of cause-specific death rates. Addressing those challenges could prevent misleading results. METHODS Our data was collected by Ministry of Health and Medical Education, Tehran and Isfahan cemeteries from 1995 to 2010. After converting ICD codes of Iran's death registration into GBD codes, 170 underlying causes of deaths were recognized in the available data. A wide range of methods were applied for preparing the data. We used several statistical models to estimate mortality rates in age-sex-province groups for all causes of deaths. The considerable number of combinations for age, sex, cause of death, year, and p...
Iranian journal of allergy, asthma, and immunology, 2016
In this study, we aimed to conduct a meta-analysis on the results of eligible studies to estimate... more In this study, we aimed to conduct a meta-analysis on the results of eligible studies to estimate the prevalence of asthma, COPD, and Chronic bronchitis in Iran. International and Iranian databases including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Iranmedex, and scientific information database (SID) were searched for population-based studies that had reported the prevalence of asthma and COPD from 1990 to 2015. We conducted the meta-analysis using metaprop application of Stata statistical software. I-Squared was used for calculating heterogeneity among the studies. To determine causes of heterogeneity, subgroup analysis and meta-regression method were used. Based on the results of random effect method, the overall prevalence of asthma ever was 4.56% (3.76%-5.36%) among men while it was 4.17% (3.42%-4.91%) among women. Pooled prevalence of current asthma was 7.95% while confidence interval changed from 5.85% to 10.06% (men 5.83% (2.75%-8.92%), women 9.13% (3.35%-14.94%)). Also based on the r...
Background In estimating the global burden of cancer, adolescents and young adults with cancer ar... more Background In estimating the global burden of cancer, adolescents and young adults with cancer are often overlooked, despite being a distinct subgroup with unique epidemiology, clinical care needs, and societal impact. Comprehensive estimates of the global cancer burden in adolescents and young adults (aged 15-39 years) are lacking. To address this gap, we analysed results from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019, with a focus on the outcome of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), to inform global cancer control measures in adolescents and young adults. Methods Using the GBD 2019 methodology, international mortality data were collected from vital registration systems, verbal autopsies, and population-based cancer registry inputs modelled with mortality-to-incidence ratios (MIRs). Incidence was computed with mortality estimates and corresponding MIRs. Prevalence estimates were calculated using modelled survival and multiplied by disability we...
BACKGROUND Inequity in megacities is a real concern in public health perspective. Tehran is a meg... more BACKGROUND Inequity in megacities is a real concern in public health perspective. Tehran is a megacity with more than 8 million population that is divided into 22 regions (counties) with considerable diversity in socioeconomic status. On the other hand, spatial cluster detection is an important tool in disease surveillance to identify areas of elevated risk and to generate hypotheses about disease or mortality etiology. The present research aims to identify high or low-risk clusters for five non-communicable leading causes of death in 22 regions of Tehran province. METHODS Cause-specific mortality rates were extracted from Behesht-e-Zahra registry system for Tehran province in 2011. Spatial scan statistic as a most common method in spatial cluster detection was chosen to detect clusters with elevated risk of death. Given the observed and expected number death in each region, a log likelihood ratio (LLR) criterion was used to test whether a cluster is significant. RESULT Two high-ris...
OBJECTIVES Health-related quality of life after kidney transplant in adolescents is a major conce... more OBJECTIVES Health-related quality of life after kidney transplant in adolescents is a major concern; nevertheless, there is a paucity of data on the variables that have an effect on it. This study evaluated the extent to which socioeconomic, clinical, and psychological characteristics explain the variance in the health-related quality of life of adolescent Iranian kidney transplant recipients. MATERIALS AND METHODS Into a hierarchical regression analysis, the cross-sectional socioeconomic, clinical, and psychological characteristics were entered among 55 adolescent Iranian kidney transplant recipients. RESULTS The relative predictive power of socioeconomic, clinical, and psychological variables with respect to health-related quality of life was 21.8% (P = .088), 21.2% (P = .014), and 27.6% (P = .001). CONCLUSIONS Psychological factors had a greater relative predictive power in postrenal transplant health-related quality of life of adolescents than did socioeconomic and clinical char...
BACKGROUND The present study describes the epidemiological status of sexually transmitted infecti... more BACKGROUND The present study describes the epidemiological status of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Iran based on the Global Burden of Disease study 2010 (the GBD 2010), and compares this with those of other neighboring countries. METHODS The burden of STIs from 1990 to 2010 in Iran was derived from a systematic study, namely the GBD 2010, which was conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Using a model-based estimation, Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) were calculated on the basis of the prevalence of STIs. The GBD 2010 used disability weights, and a mortality rate that was obtained from the vital registration system of Iran. We review the results of the GBD 2010 estimations for STIs in Iran. RESULTS The trend of DALYs attributable to STIs (107.3 and 26.47 per 100,000 people in 1990 and 2010, respectively) and deaths (1.13 and 0.12 per 100,000 people in 1990 and 2010, respectively) decreased dramatically in Iran during the last two decad...
Background and Aim: Dichotic listening means presentation of two different auditory stimuli to ea... more Background and Aim: Dichotic listening means presentation of two different auditory stimuli to each ear simultaneously. This study deals with the development of Persian version of Bergen dichotic listening test and its preliminary results on auditory attention and language laterality in adults with normal hearing. Methods: Persian version of the Bergen dichotic listening test was instructed by six consonant-vowel syllables to evaluate three conditions of non-forced attention, attention to right and attention to left ears separately. Then, it was performed on 54 right-handed young adults with normal hearing and the mean age of 23.24 (SD=2.78) years from both genders. Results: Frequency of correct response in the right ear was higher significantly in two conditions of non-forced attention (83.3%) and attention to the right ear (98.1%), and also was higher significantly in the left ear (-79.6%) in attention to the left (p<0.0001). Laterality index was 31.33% in non-forced attention,...
Clinical testing of children in schools is challenging, with economic implications limiting its f... more Clinical testing of children in schools is challenging, with economic implications limiting its frequent use as a monitoring tool of the risks assumed by children and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, a wastewater based epidemiology approach has been used to monitor 16 schools (10 primary, 5 secondary and 1 post-16 and further education for a total of 17 sites) in England. A total of 296 samples over 9 weeks have been analysed for N1 and E genes using qPCR methods. Of the samples returned, 47.3% were positive for one or both genes with a frequency of detection in line with the respective community. WBE offers a promising low cost, non-invasive approach for supplementing clinical testing and can offer longitudinal insights that are impractical with traditional clinical testing.
Background The sustainable development goals (SDGs) aim to end HIV/AIDS as a public health threat... more Background The sustainable development goals (SDGs) aim to end HIV/AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. Understanding the current state of the HIV epidemic and its change over time is essential to this effort. This study assesses the current sex-specific HIV burden in 204 countries and territories and measures progress in the control of the epidemic. Methods To estimate age-specific and sex-specific trends in 48 of 204 countries, we extended the Estimation and Projection Package Age-Sex Model to also implement the spectrum paediatric model. We used this model in cases where age and sex specific HIV-seroprevalence surveys and antenatal care-clinic sentinel surveillance data were available. For the remaining 156 of 204 locations, we developed a cohort-incidence bias adjustment to derive incidence as a function of cause-of-death data from vital registration systems. The incidence was input to a custom Spectrum model. To assess progress, we measured the percentage change in incident ...
Uploads
Papers by Shadi Rahimzadeh