Medical Journal of The Islamic Republic of Iran (MJIRI)

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 Abstract

 Background: Cervical cancer is the most common female genital tract malignancy and

 is the major cause of death from gynecologic cancer worldwide. The majority of cervical

 cancers develop through a series of gradual, precancerous lesions. Screening asymptomatic

 women with regular Pap smears allows diagnosis of the readily treatable preinvasive phase.

 We performed this study to determine the prevalence of precancerous lesions and assess the

 effect of demographic, pathologic and family economic factors on developing lesions.

 Methods: This cross-sectional, descriptive, analytic study was carried out on 6024

 women under coverage of Tabriz health care centers. Pap smear was done in all subjects and

 questionnaires were filled by health providers. The data were analyzed with SPSS statistical

 software (version 12) and statistical methods such as chi-square and t-test.

 Results: Of 6024 Pap smears, 62 (1.02%) demonstrated precancerous lesions of which

 41(0.68%) were atypical squamous cell of undetermined significance (ASC-US), 11

 (0.18%) were low grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (LSIL) and 10 (0.16%) were high

 grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL). No invasive cancer case was observed in this

 study. According to our observation, the following factors increased the risk of precancerous

 lesions: multiparity > 3, abortion > 1, gravida >3, husband marriage >1. The protective

 effect of condom as a barrier contraceptive was observed.

 Conclusion: According to this study it is imperative to make readily available facilities

 for screening asymptomatic women all over Iran.

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  Background: Smoking has physical, psychological, and social impacts on women’s health and subsequently the community’s health. Therefore, it is important to have an estimation of smoking among Iranian women.

  Since comprehensive data are not available in this respect, the authors performed a systematic review and metaanalyzed all high-quality studies in this field.

  Methods: All available electronic papers were searched by certain keywords and were included in this study according to the inclusion criteria regardless of the publication year. Furthermore, non-electronic resources including the final report of research projects, dissertations, unpublished papers (grey literature) and books published by the Iranian ministry of health were also evaluated in the study. The materials were assessed for their quality and meeting the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Considering the high degree of variability in many selected

  studies, we used random effect method for meta-analysis.

  Results: The highest and lowest rates of cigarette smoking among women were 10.5% and 0.04%, respectively. The prevalence rates of smoking were different in various subgroups ranging from 0 to 0.4% in students, 1.1 to 3.1% in adults, and 1.4 to 8.7% in all subgroups. According to the meta-analyses performed for the subgroups, the mean age of participants, performing the study in urban or rural areas, and the year of paper publication were major sources of heterogeneity.

  Conclusion: The studies were highly different with regard to their findings, and it seems that there is an age and time trend for the findings. Furthermore, the prevalence of smoking was different in various regions of the country.

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Background: Finding social causes of a particular disease or specific health problem in groups or hidden illnesses, such as drug misuse is difficult. To estimate the population size, it should be taken into account that under enumeration usually occurs in direct estimation of population of certain high-risk groups. The present study used indirect methods to accurately estimate the population of students who have once experienced marijuana abuse.
   Methods: This cross sectional research was conducted on 461 students in Hamadan. Two indirect methods, the Network Scale-up (NSU) and proxy respondent method (PRM), were used. Data were analyzed by statistical tests and SPSS version 16 and Excel.              
   Results: The mean age (standard deviation) was 22.51 (4.19 years), and the prevalence of marijuana misuse was 1.94%, 4.12%, and 2.6%, respectively, in girls and 14.57%, 12.58%, and 10.4% in boys using NSU, PRM, and direct method.
   Conclusion: Direct and NSU methods had higher bias than PRM, the frequency of PRM was closer to reality, and the once use prevalence of marijuana was higher in the young male population than in the female.
 

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Background: To evaluate the structure of students' social networks (So. N) generally and in a specific network (Sp. N), in which students discuss delicate puberty concerns with their classmates, the present research examined the communication networks of students in Hamadan, Iran, a mid-sized city in Iran.
   Methods: In this cross-sectional study, the data were collected from a total of 350 students in 14 classes from 14 schools using a stratified sampling method. In each class, the communication networks of students were examined by asking direct questions about links among them. The students’ centrality indices were computed using UCINET 6 software. Since the size of the classes was different, the centrality index was reported as a percentage, which was the number of reported links over the maximum number of possible ones.
   Results: The centrality index in So. Ns and Sp. Ns in boys was more than those in girls (55.4% vs 47.6% in So. N, and 33.4% vs 20.1% in Sp. N). The students’ centrality indices in So. Ns and Sp. Ns were also positively correlated (r=0.58; p<0.001). In addition, the Sp. N was around 45% lower than So. N in both sexes.
   Conclusion: The communication styles among students in Sp. N appeared to be very different from those in So. N and the styles were related to demographic traits. As a result, it was determined that a thorough investigation of communication networks was essential for customizing health promotion initiatives for students.

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Background: Determining the risk of severe course coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and its related factors in survivors of common cancers such as breast cancer is important. This study has been designed to evaluate the prevalence of COVID-19 infection in breast cancer survivors and also estimate the risk of severe disease in this population.
   Methods: Out of 6134 patients in the Shiraz Breast Cancer Registry (SBCR), A total of 292 patients who elapsed less than a year from their breast cancer diagnosis were excluded. We called 5842 patients. Finally, 4135 breast cancer survivors who agreed to cooperate were screened for COVID-19 symptoms by a symptom-based questionnaire in November 2020. COVID-19 in symptomatic participants was confirmed by a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. The clinical and paraclinical data of the COVID-19 course were collected for patients with a positive PCR test.
   Results: A total of 247 (5.9%) participants had at least reported one of the COVID-19 symptoms. Also, 17% of symptomatic participants had a positive PCR test; 83.7% had mild disease, 9.5% moderate, and 16.7% had severe conditions. Chronic cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and diabetes were related to an increased risk of severe illness (P = 0.018, P = 0.018, P = 0.002).
   Conclusion: This study suggests that breast cancer intermediate and longtime survivors without other underlying diseases are considered at low risk for developing severe/critical COVID-19.