مجله پیاورد سلامت
سال هفدهم شماره 2 (خرداد و تیر 1402)

Health literacy plays a role in “reducing human casualties and financial costs” in a society. Emotional intelligence and media literacy also contribute to people’s success in life. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the mediating role of media literacy in the relationship between emotional intelligence and health literacy among graduate students of Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University. 

This research is based on the nature and general characteristics, quantitative; Based on the purpose, it is applied and based on the research method and data collection method, is a descriptive correlation based on structural equation model. The statistical population was graduate students of Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University in 2020 (2218 students). The statistical sample of the research is 327 people who were selected by stratified random sampling method. To collect data, Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (1998), Montazeri et al. Health Literacy Questionnaire (2014) and media literacy questionnaire were used. The reliability of the questionnaires was obtained using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.91, 0.84 and 0.79, respectively. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (structural equation model) using SPSS and LISREL software. 

The findings showed the mean of emotional intelligence, health literacy and media literacy of graduate students of Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University is 3.10, 3.47 and 3.58, respectively. Also, the results showed a significant relationship between emotional intelligence and students’ health literacy. According to the findings, there is a significant relationship between emotional intelligence with media literacy, and media literacy with health literacy. Also, the media literacy variable plays a mediating role in the relationship between emotional intelligence and health literacy (coefficient) of 0.58 units. The results of the structural equation model test also showed that the proposed conceptual model fits the relationship between emotional intelligence, health literacy and students’ media literacy. 

Media literacy can not only directly affect students’ health literacy, but also has a mediating role between emotional intelligence and health literacy. Due to the effect of emotional intelligence on students’ health and media literacy, it is recommended that the necessary planning to be done in graduate education and to strengthen emotional intelligence.

Bibliometric analysis by describing the state of publications and identifying key entities and emerging topics plays an important role in evaluating research. The aim of the paper is to study the global trends of scientific collaboration networks of researchers, organizations and countries and the co-occurrence of words in the field of social medicine in the database of Web of Science.

The method of investigation is bibliometric. The sample comprises 8494 publications in the area of social medicine between 2002 and 2021 in the Web of science database. The drawing of the scientific collaboration network of researchers, organisations and countries, and the analysis of the words network of co-occurrence, was made using the bibliometric software Vosviewer.

The publication process of social medicine documents in the target period is increasing. Research articles had the highest number of documents frequency and review articles received the most citations. The United States had the most published literature in this area, and most authors and organizations were from that country. The degrees of two countries, Canada and Australia, had the most citations per documents, and the five countries of South Africa, Portugal, Pakistan, India, and Iran were emerging players in this field. The network of words co-occurrence of social medicine in three groups was devoted to “preventive research in social medicine”, “social determinants of health” and “healthy lifestyle, nutrition and physical activity”. In terms of temporal occurrence, the five keywords public health, mental health, social medicine, meta-analysis and epidemiology were emerging subjects in the area of social medicine.

Understanding impact of non-clinical studies of social medicine on people’s lives has led to an increase in research in this field. In addition to the traditional role of developed countries, some developing countries are also new players in this field and seeking to develop their infrastructure in social medicine.

High blood pressure and increased lipid profile are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. To improve cardiovascular health, lifestyle changes should be considered as a guide to reduce people’s inactivity and modify healthy eating patterns. Spirulina is a green alga and has been considered as a food supplement for the treatment of various diseases. This study was conducted with the aim of determining the effect of spirulina supplement and eight weeks of combined exercises on blood pressure and lipid profile in women with high blood pressure.

The study was conducted as a clinical trial in 40 women with high blood pressure (50-60 years old). People were included in the study in 4 intervention and control groups. The data were collected during two stages of pre-test and post-test in terms of changes in blood pressure and lipid profile. The supplement intervention group consumed 4.2 grams of spirulina supplement daily and had an exercise intervention of 8 weeks of combined aerobic and resistance exercises. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS software (version 23), one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey’s post hoc test at level 0.05.

The results of ANOVA showed that there was a significant difference between systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, and VLDL, after the test, in the study groups (P-value<0.05). The highest mean±standard deviation (SD) of systolic blood pressure (141.90±9.85), and total cholesterol (213.30±28.93), after the test, was observed in combined exercise group and the mean± SD of VLDL after the test (34.60±6.46) was observed in the control group. Also, the results of Tukey’s post hoc test showed that there was a significant difference between the mean blood pressure in the control groups-spirulina supplement, control-combined exercises, spirulina supplement-spirulina supplement and combined exercises, and combined exercises-spirulina supplement and combined exercises. Also, there was a significant difference between the mean of total cholesterol and VLDL in combined exercises-spirulina supplement, combined exercises, and control-spirulina supplement groups, respectively (P<0.05).

It seems that the use of spirulina supplement and eight weeks of combined exercises may have beneficial effects on blood pressure and lipid profile in women with high blood pressure.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global and Iranian economies have been affected in various ways. The tax sector seems to have reacted relatively quickly to this pandemic. This study examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tax revenues in West Azerbaijan Province.

This descriptive-analytic and cross-sectional study was conducted in the second half of 2021. Primary data for 17 cities of West Azerbaijan Province were provided by the General Administration of Tax Affairs of this province in the form of 9 variables in Excel Format. The data were related to 2019 (Before the COVID-19 pandemic) and 2020 (After the COVID-19 pandemic). The data were analyzed by SPSS using descriptive statistics (Frequency, Percentage, Median, Interquartile range) and analytical statistics (Wilcoxon signed rank test) at a 5% significance level.

Based on the descriptive results, the COVID-19 pandemic caused an increase in the tax revenues of West Azerbaijan province in the fields of government employees’ salary tax, stock transfer tax, inheritance tax and stamp duty tax and a decrease in these revenues in the areas of private employee’s salary tax, income tax on legal entities, business income tax, property transfer tax and value-added tax. Based on the analytical results, the impact of this pandemic on the private employee’s salary tax (P=0.003), income tax on legal entities (P=0.019), business income tax (P=0.013), property transfer tax (P=0.015) and value-added tax (P=0.001) was found to be negative and significant. Furthermore, the effect on stock transfer tax (P=0.030) and inheritance tax (P=0.001) was positive and significant. On the other hand, the impact of this pandemic on government employees’ salary tax (P=0.287) and stamp duty tax (P=0.356) was not statistically significant.

The COVID-19 pandemic hurt most of the tax revenue sectors. To compensate for the decreased income in vulnerable sectors, the government must develop international trade with comprehensive support from the non-governmental sector while creating new tax lines. Also, stabilizing the financing cycle and designing mechanisms to prevent tax evasion, especially in high-paying jobs, can be fruitful.

Today, natural compounds such as peptides and probiotics can be mentioned as a supplement to the treatment of diseases such as cancer. These compounds may be effective in preventing the progression or treatment of cancer by affecting some molecular pathways including inflammation. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of D-peptide-B and B.bifidum probiotic lysate on the expression of TNF-α and IL-1 genes in gastric cancer cells of AGS cell line.

In this study, AGS and HEK cells were cultured in DMEM medium with 10% bovine serum. The cells were treated with different concentrations of D-peptide-B and B.bifidum lysate and were incubated for 24 hours. The cell viability was checked by MTT. For molecular investigations, after RNA extraction and cDNA synthesis, the relative expression of TNF-α and IL-1 genes was evaluated using Real time PCR, and the data were analyzed using statistical methods One-way ANOVA.

The MTT results indicated that the AGS cancer cells’ survival rate decreased after treatment with dipeptide-B and lysate of B.bifidum as compared to HEK control cells. Furthermore, the study found that the expression levels of TNF-α and IL-1 genes in gastric cancer cells were significantly higher after treatment with D-Peptide-B, bacterial lysate, or both, when compared to normal HEK cells (P≤0.05). Specifically, the IL-1 gene expression increased by 300% (4 times) for peptide treatment, 100% (2 times) for bacterial treatment, and 650% (7.5 times) for combined treatment. Similarly, the TNF-α gene expression increased by 350% for peptide treatment, 100% for bacterial treatment, and 520% for combined treatment. These results suggest that these compounds may have induced cell death in cancer cells by affecting other molecular pathways.

Considering that D-peptide-B and B.bifidum lysate had no significant toxicity on normal cells and caused a significant decrease in the survival of cancer cells and this toxicity was dose dependent, therefore, consideration might be given to these natural compounds in treatment of gastric cancer.

All people living in a society are not equally at risk of COVID-19 infection and hospitalization. The current study is aimed to determine the factors related to COVID-19 infection and hospitalization among participants of Ravansar Non-Communicable Disease (RaNCD) cohort study. 

The present study was conducted between 28th February, 2020 to 27th November, 2021. Data from the RaNCD study, morbidity and hospitalizations cases (extracted from the medical care monitoring system, SAMA system and the handwritten list of the health department) and positive serological results were used. For the case-cohort study, 626 confirmed and/or probable cases and 2107 randomly selected participants as sub-cohort were recruited. For the case-control study, 188 COVID-19 hospitalized patients from RaNCD (as cases) and 632 positive outpatients identified as controls. Data were analyzed using Cox and logistic regression, respectively. 

In case-cohort study, the hazard ratio of COVID-19 among people living in rural areas, in smokers and those in middle socioeconomic status was, 0.37 (0.24, 0.58), 1.50 (1.07, 2.11), as compared to the reference groups. While the hazard ratio of people aged 46-64 and those ≥65 years old, as compared to the reference group within the first year, was 3.47 (1.76, 6.86) and 6.45 (2.80, 14.85), the corresponding value after one year was 2.23 (1.13, 4.40) and 3.52 (1.53, 8.10), respectively. The hazard ratio among those with at least one comorbidity was 2.45 (1.53, 3.92) in the first year of study and after one year decreased to 1.82 (1.14, 2.92). In addition, moderate and vigorous physical activity decreased the hazard ratio. In case-control study the odds ratio of hospitalization increased by 0.03% (1.03(1.01, 1.05)) with an increase of one year in age and in people with at least three comorbidities was 2.43 (1.24, 4.73) times of those without comorbidity.     

Overall, one year after starting the study the decrease in hazard ratio of COVID-19 was significant. Increase in age and having comorbidities are factors that increased the odds ratio of hospitalization. Such people can be considered for the next waves of COVID-19 prioritized for health care and booster vaccination.

Metabolic syndrome refers to a set of metabolic disorders related to obesity, such as abdominal obesity, increased body fat mass, lipid disorders, hypertension, increased blood glucose, and insulin resistance. The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effect of 8 weeks of CXWORX exercises combined with inulin consumption on some indicators of oxidative stress in obese women with metabolic syndrome.

Forty eight obese women with metabolic syndrome in the age range of 30 to 40 years were randomly divided into Control, inulin, CX exercise and combined groups were included. Subjects were present in the laboratory environment and 5 cc of blood was taken from their brachial vein. Blood sample was taken to measure malondialdehyde and xanthine oxidase (pre-test). Then the aforementioned interventions were performed on the studied groups for a period of 8 weeks. Finally, blood sampling was done again to measure the variables (post-test).

The results of the correlated t-test revealed that in all three groups, the intervention led to a significant decrease in malondialdehyde compared to the pre-test; However, xanthine oxidase variable did not change significantly in the exercise group and significantly decreased in the inulin and combined groups compared to the pre-test. ANOVA results revealed that compared to the control group, the amount of malondialdehyde is significant only in the combined group (P≤0.05). The amount of this variable in the combined group decreased significantly compared to the exercise and inulin group (P≤0.05). No significant difference was observed between the exercise and inulin groups (P>0.05). Amount of xanthine oxidase, a significant difference had between the inulin and combination groups with the control group (P≤0.05). No significant difference was observed between the exercise and inulin groups (P>0.05). Despite this, a significant difference in xanthine oxidase levels was observed between the combined group with the exercise and inulin groups (P≤0.05).

Based on the available findings, it is concluded that the implementation of CX exercises combined with the use of inulin reduces the oxidative stress function more than the application of each of them alone in women with metabolic syndrome.

Simulation-based Mobile Education is one of the necessities of the new era as well as an escalating field to meet the needs of different educational systems and levels. Considering the increasing application of simulation-based technologies, and the popularity of Augmented Reality (AR) in the field of education, the present research aims to facilitate the initial steps in understanding the technical requirements and software used in developing these types of apps.

The data required for this research was collected by searching in library resources to identify the commonly used platform/software in designing and developing AR-based educational apps. At the same time, the included studies’ app features/sections were also extracted, and the total of this information was presented in a table. After indicating the mainly used software in the development of these types of apps, a simple app architecture and a how-to-develop model using the most practical software were illustrated.

“3D Model display” and “multiple-choice questions” were identified as the minimum (basic) features of an AR-based educational app. To identify the most commonly used software in creating AR-based educational apps, articles were reviewed, required information was extracted, and gathered in form of a table. The results of the review showed that Unity 3D and Vuforia have the highest usage statistics in creating these types of apps. Finally, a simple model of the process of developing AR-based educational app and a sample output of this type of app were presented based on this information.

Simulation-based education is one of the prominent and growing topics worldwide. Augmented Reality is one of the most renowned and widely used technologies in this field. The results of this study encompass a set of basic features of an AR-based educational app as well as the software that can be used to create such apps. Therefore, this study can assist researchers interested in this field in navigating the simplest path to developing an AR-based educational app by providing them with an initial technical understanding of AR-based education.