Assess the Knowledge of Medical Students About HTLV-1 in Mashhad University of Medical Science

Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is known to be endemic in the population of northeastern Iran. This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the knowledge and attitude of medical students of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences about the HTLV-1 virus.

The present study was a descriptive-analytical study that was conducted in Mashhad Medical School from April to June 2014. The research population included all medical students studying at the time of the study (307 people). The tool of data collection was a questionnaire including 4 parts of demographic characteristics, the amount of information resources used, the level of awareness about HTLV-1 infection and measuring the attitude of students towards HTLV-1 infection. The data was analyzed in the form of descriptive statistics using SPSS 16.0 software.

A total of 271 people responded to the questionnaire (response rate: 88/27). Among the participants, 130 were male and 141 were female. The majority of students, 161 people got their information from the classroom and 157 people were natives of Mashhad. The information obtained from the description of the questions and the percentage of correct answers to the questions showed that the level of students' knowledge about this infection was average with an average score of 16.66 out of 40 points, and the average score of the students' attitude was reported as 68.11 with an average level.

The obtained results reported the level of knowledge of the target group as medium-low, and the level of attitude of this group as medium-high. Also, there was a direct relationship between the amount of information and the level of attitude with the year of entering the university and studying in the university, which reports the slope of this change as low.