Journal of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
Volume:7 Issue: 4, Autumn 2021

Since the start of a pandemic from Wuhan, China in 2019, there is tremendous attention in the COVID-19 manifestation. One of the most important COVID-19 clinical presentations is gastrointestinal symptoms. The current systematic review study aims to focus on the implication of the gastrointestinal tract in patients infected with SARS-CoV-2.

For that we searched literature in MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, and Embase. Also, the medRxiv was searched for preprints. The search was performed by using the following keywords "Covid-19", "Coronavirus", "SARS-CoV-2 infection", "SARS-CoV-2", "Gastrointestinal", "Gastrointestinal Tract", "digestive system". All the studies were conducted based on the PRISMA criteria.

Of 3028 retrieved documents, 111 studies with 21126 COVID-19 cases were included. The prevalence of any Gastrointestinal symptoms was 17.22% (14.48 to 20.13). The prevalence of diarrhea was 13.75% (12.07 to 15.44), anorexia 27.41% (21.53 to 33.29) and Nausea/vomiting 8.11% (6.87 to 9.35). Furthermore, the prevalence of other symptoms in our current study was fever 76.70% (73.42 to 79.83), cough 58.07% (54.59 to 61.52) and dyspnea/shortness of breath 24.63% (20.06 to 29.48). According to meta-regression results, age (p: 0.027) and fever (p<0.001) did have significant effect on prevalence of any Gastrointestinal symptoms.

The anorexia, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting are the most common Gastrointestinal presentations. The majorities of studies are in the Case series setting and conducted in China.

Level of knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of the community towards corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is important to prevent and control the disease . In Ethiopia there are some studies that assess the KAP’s of different segments of the community and reported different results. However, there is limited review evidence that pooled the proportion of KAP of the community to wards COVID-19 prevention and control of the disease in Ethiopia. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to summarize and pool the proportion of KAP towards COVID-19 prevention and control in general community.

A systematic review and meta-analysis study was conducted to estimate the pooled proportion of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards COVID-19 prevention and control in general community. Electronic databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar and Science Direct were searched for studies reported in English language without restricting publication year. The search strategy was used by combining the keywords: “Knowledge”, “Attitude”, “Practice”, “COVID-19”, and “Ethiopia” both in Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) and free text terms. Data was analyzed using STATA version 14. Random effect model meta-analysis was employed to estimate pooled proportion of KAP’s towards COVID-19 in  general community

Data on 12391 participants which retrived from 26 studies included into this review .The study was pooled  to estimate the pooled proportion of knowledge, attitude and practice towards COVID-19 prevention and control in the community. Our meta-analysis reveal that the pooled proportion of good knowledge was 62% (95% CI: 54%-71%), while favorable attitude 64 %( 95% CI: 58%-71%) and prevention practice 44% (95% CI: 32%-56%).

Poisoning is one of the most common causes of hospital admission. This study aims at 1- to determine the characteristics of poisoning, 2-to discover the relationship of the patients’ characteristics, and 3- to suggest a pattern of characteristics of poisoning.

In this descriptive cross-sectional study, characteristics’ of patients with poisoning were extracted from the hospital information system (HIS) in a large teaching hospital. Gender, type of admission, the priority of admission, type of referral, cause of referral, insurance organization, age, and month of referral were the variables extracted. Data were analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistical methods in SPSS software version 21.

Of the 15204 patients included in this analysis, 55.2% of the patients were men. Also, 68.5% had non-urgent triage level, and the cause of the 60.7% of the poisoning was medication overdose. Most of the patients (86.2%) aged from 30 to 20 years with the most frequent referral in May, June, July, and August. According to logistic regression results, gender, type of admission, type of referral, cause of referral, insurance organization, age, and referral month has a statistically significant effect on triage level.

The use of preventive measures from the occurrence of poisoning is necessary for the country because this problem occurs due to the lack of awareness about its causative factors. Regarding the more prevalence of intentional poisoning, the necessary steps are needed to be taken to identify the Psychological causes and prevent suicide in at-risk groups.

Thalassemia major is an important health problem in Mediterranean countries, placing a tremendous emotional, psychological, and economic burden. This study aimed to evaluate the effective factors on long- and short-term survival of thalassemia major patients using mixture and non-mixture cure survival models based on generalized-Gompertz distribution. The generalized-Gompertz distribution has flexible curve of failure rate that may be appropriate for different situation of survival analysis.

In this retrospective cohort study, medical records of 300 thalassemia major patients referring to Zafar's thalassemia clinic during 1994-2017 in Tehran, Iran were reviewed. Mixture and non-mixture cure survival models based on Gompertz and generalized-Gompertz distributions were performed to investigate the survival of thalassemia major patients and the influential factors in their survival and longevity. The Akaike Information Criteria was used to compare the models. Analysis was performed using SAS software version 9.4.

The mean survival time was 32.21 ± 7.47years. The censorship rate was 78.3%. In both of the mixture and non-mixture cure models, generalized Gompertz distribution, as compared to the standard Gompertz had the lower Akaike (AIC) criteria that was 200.8. Based on this model, iron deposition in liver at mild and moderate levels had a significant effect on the long-term survival of these patients.

Based on Akaike Information criteria, considering the generalized Gompertz mixture cure model has the best fit for the data of thalassemia major disease in which patients are long-term survivors. In order to analyze the survival of patients with thalassemia major, since iron deposition in liver at mild and moderate levels had a significant effect on the long-term survival of these patients; it is recommended to regular iron chelation therapy for extra iron extraction.

 The growth curve are time dependece regression models  which commonly are useful in describing the rapid growth of total cases or deaths in a pandemic situatio.

 The Gompertz and logistic functions are useful to describe the growth curve of a population or any time dependence variable such as metabolic rate, growth of tumors and total number of cases or death in a pervasive disease. The logistics family of growth curve including logistic, SSlogistic, generalized logistic and power logistic and Gompertz models were considered to describe the growth curve of total_cases_per_million (t_c_p_m) of COVID-19 in Iran during the 19-Feb-2020 to 20-May-2021. The models were fitted to data using nls function in R and the fitting accuracy was evaluated using the numerical and graphical approaches.

The logistic family and Gompertz growth curve were applied to fit the total_cases_per_million of COVID-19 in Iran as the response versus the time in days as predictor variable. The RMSE criterion was used as the numerical criterion to assess the model accuracy. The growth curve of fitted models was compared with the growth curve of observed data. Results indicated that the logistic and Gompertz models provided a better description of target variable than the alternatives.

This paper considered the logistic family of growth curve including logistic, SSlogistic, generalized logistic and power logistic and Gompertz models to describe the total_cases_per_million of COVID-19 in Iran during the 19-Feb-2020 to 20-May-2021. As results shown, the logistic and Gompertz models provided a better description of response variable than the alternatives. Therefore, the logistic and Gompertz models are able to describe and forecast the COVID-19 variables (including total cases, death, recovered and so on) very well.

Unplanned pregnancy is a public health problem that affects maternal and child health, including maternal death, abortion, and low birth weight. Consequently, the government established family planning for action to prevent and reduce the health problems for most disadvantaged women.

This study was to investigate the determinant factors of unplanned pregnancy among pregnant women in Ethiopia.

A Population based cross-sectional study was conducted from Ethiopian 2016 demographic healthsurvey data. A total of 3894 pregnant women were in clude dinthestudy and thesam pleswer eselected troughm ultistage stratified cluster sampling.Uni-variate and multiple logistic regression analysis was used toidentify factors associated with an unplanned pregnancy. Variables with p-value < 0.05 were identified assignificantfactors.

Among 3894 study pregnant, 31.05% of pregnancies was unplanned. The analysis result revealed that women whose age ≤ 30 years [AOR = 5.42, 95 % CI=2.38 - 12.34], women in rural [AOR=1.11, 95% CI=1.03 - 2.39], illiterate women [AOR=2.3,95% CI=2.02 - 4.09], women drinks alcohol [AOR=1.45,95% CI=1.31- 1.67], smoker women [AOR= 1.52, 95% CI 1.49 - 2.65 ],women chewing chat[AOR=1.66, 95% CI=1.66 1.18 - 2.33], unemployed women[AOR = 4.97, 95%CI=1.31-12.38] , poor economic level [AOR=8.42,95%CI=5.87- 14.39] and none-user contraceptive methods [AOR=1.7, 95% CI=1.14 – 3.87] were found to be associated with unplanned pregnancy(p < 0.05).

The prevalence of unplanned pregnancy in the study area was 32.05%. The findings suggest that certain groups of women are at increased risk of unplanned pregnancy and would benefit from targeted family planning interventions

Handling the COVID-19 outbreak is one of the most novelties modern work is facing by many countries today. Massive outbreak needs countries efficacy and talent in creating new approaches. These approaches need to prevent the spread of the outbreak and increase the citizens' belief as the outbreak will damage the countries' functional capacity. Technical efficiency is used maximally to gain total control of the conditions. This study aims to measure the relative efficiency level of Southeast Asian countries in dealing with COVID-19 pandemic over one year.

The relative efficiency level of the most successful countries in Southeast Asia in managing COVID-19 infection was determined using Frontier 4.1 through Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and Excel software. The technical efficiency of the SFA model is defined as the ratio of observed output to maximum feasible production. If the country's technical efficiency (TE) is greater than 80%, it is the most effective in Southeast Asia at managing COVID-19 infection, but if it is less than 80% or close to 0, it is inefficient.

This research aims at the COVID-19 epidemic in a Southeast Asian country, where the country with the highest technical efficiency score is the most efficient and indicates the country's ability to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak without any complications. Laos was ranked first (TE = 0.99901), with a technical efficiency score that was higher than that of most other Southeast Asian countries. Singapore comes in second position with a technical efficiency score of 0.99882. Brunei is in third place for COVID-19, with a technical efficiency score of 0.99870. Cambodia is in last place, with a score of 0.84675 for technical efficiency.

Laos is the highest technical efficiency score among the southeast Asian countries. Various things that can lead to inefficiency include lack of awareness about standard operating procedures (SOP) among the causes of COVID-19 case infection in the workplace, and the community continues to increase. This condition may also be due to the lack of medication or vaccines to cure COVID-19. All communities around the world are expected to adopt standard operating procedures (SOP) such as wearing face masks, hand sanitizers, and social distance to curb the increasingly violent spread of COVID-19.

Iran is facing a rapid change in the epidemiological pattern of HIV. We examine trends in disease incidence and factors associated with the development of HIV over the last two decades in Iran.

We retrospectively collected data from patients who attended the Behavior Diseases Consultation Center of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in Iran. Individuals were contributed if they were HIV-positive. We examined baseline factors including demographic, behavioral and clinical characteristics for all participants. Changes in population characteristics were assessed using chi-square test or the Fisher’s exact test.

From 1989 to 2014, 584 individuals were eligible for present analysis according to the inclusion criteria. Most patients were men (87%) with most being 36–52 years old, unemployed (58%), married (39.3%), less educated (47.7%) and had a history of imprisonment (83%). The most common modes of HIV transmission were injection drug use (IDU) (51.4%) and IDU along with the sexual relationship (26.5%). These transmission modes varied significantly according to gender (p-value<0.001). Similarly, IDU and sexual relationship were most important transmission modes in males and females, respectively. The incidence rate of HIV through sexual-related modes had a higher proportion than IDU in recent years.

In Iran, the pattern of HIV transmission is shifting from unsafe injection drug to unsafe sexual contact for forthcoming years. Also, increasing trend of HIV incidence in women is remarkable. Accordingly, HIV-prevention strategies need to be changed.