Journal of Research in Health Sciences
Volume:24 Issue: 3, Summer 2024

 The use of tobacco is a significant global public health issue. According to the World Health Organization, tobacco use is a considerable risk factor for many diseases and causes more than 8 million deaths per year, with a disproportionate impact on low- and middle-income countries. Therefore, this systematic review was conducted to identify the factors influencing tobacco use among youth in low-income, lower-middle-income, and upper-middle-income countries.

Study Design: 

A system review.

 The review followed the PRISMA guidelines, and the protocol was registered on PROSPERO (CRD42023430552). Several data sources were utilized, including PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect, MEDLINE, CINAHL, and ProQuest, and cross-sectional data from participants aged 15‒24 underwent investigation. Original full-text articles have been published between 2015 and 2023. Out of the 2892 studies, 20 were included in this review after two reviewers confirmed the eligibility criteria.

 The average age of the participants was (mean±standard deviation: 19.45±1.686). Most studies were conducted in lower-middle and upper-middle-income countries. Frequently reported influences were at the individual and social levels, including demographic, economic, and psychological parameters, attitude and knowledge, individual behavioral factors, parental education, family member tobacco use, stressful life events, and social networks. At the environmental level, factors included secondhand smoke exposure, community context, media channels, and access to tobacco.

 The findings demonstrated a significant association between youth tobacco use and individual-, social-, and environmental-level factors. Consequently, specific interventions targeting these factors should be deployed to mitigate youth tobacco use in various socioeconomic settings.

 In 2021, Nigeria had an estimated 1.9 million people living with the human immunodeficiency virus (PLHIV) and 1.7 million (90%) on antiretroviral therapy (ART).

Study Design:

 A systematic review and meta-analysis.

 This meta-analysis followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines. We searched PubMed, Embase, PsychINFO, CINAHL, Global Index Medicus, and Cochrane Library. Studies were included if they reported on ART retention in care among PLHIV in Nigeria. The random-effects meta-analyses were used to combine the studies that had complete retention data. The I2 statistic was used to assess the heterogeneity of the studies. A sensitivity analysis was then done by conducting a leave-one-out analysis. Afterward, data were analyzed using STATA version 18.

 The search yielded 966 unique articles, of which 52 studies met the inclusion criteria for the meta-analysis, and four experimental studies were split into their component arms. The total number of study participants was 563,410, and the pooled retention rate was 72% (95% CI: 67%, 76%; I2=99.9%; n=57). Sub-analysis showed that the Southeast region of Nigeria had the highest retention of 86% (95% CI: 78%, 92%), and the South-South had the lowest retention (58%; 95% CI: 38%, 79%).

 In Nigeria, the pooled ART retention rate is less than optimal to achieve the UNAIDS goal of 95%, thus developing new models for ART retention is needed.

 Numerous health apps focusing on fitness, nutrition, and physical activity are available, yet many adolescents have never used them. The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of the use of fitness and diet apps and related socio-demographic factors and digital behaviors among high school students.

Study Design: 

A cross-sectional study.

 High school students were recruited from 4 out of 21 public high schools in Belgrade, Serbia. Participants filled out an anonymous questionnaire about socio-demographic characteristics and digital behaviors, along with the e-health literacy scale (eHEALS). Adjusted logistic regression was applied for data analysis using SPSS 20.

 Of the 702 students who completed the questionnaire, 670 used smartphones (95.4%; average age 16.5±1.2 years). The prevalence of fitness and diet app use among girls was 29.7% and 9.6%, as well as 17.3% and 3.6% among boys, respectively. Having higher family income, having better e-health literacy, browsing websites about fitness and diet, and using diet apps but not watching YouTube were associated with the use of fitness apps among girls. Being younger and browsing fitness websites and YouTube were associated with the use of fitness apps among boys. Being younger, browsing websites about diet, and using fitness apps were associated with the use of diet apps among girls.

 Based on the findings, girls used fitness and diet apps more often than boys. Practical demonstrations on how to utilize certain health apps could be an additional opportunity to support positive health behaviors among adolescents.

 Weight bias internalization (WBI) is a serious challenge because of its negative impact on psychological consequences. Although the cognitive-behavioral intervention has been applied to reduce WBI, little is known about its effectiveness among Thai obese youth. Thus, this study sought to determine the effects of a cognitive-behavioral group counseling (CBGC) program on WBI and psychological outcomes in obese youths.

Study Design:

 A randomized controlled trial.

 Eighty obese youths were randomly allocated to two intervention (n=40) and control (n=40) groups. The intervention group received a CBGC program in three sessions with ten activities, while the control group performed their usual counseling process. Data were collected through standardized interviewers with a structured interview questionnaire. The chi-square test, independent samples t-test, Mann-Whitney U test, repeated measure ANOVA, and multivariate linear regression were applied for data analyses.

 At the follow-up visit, the intervention group had a significant decrease in the mean of WBI, depression, and perceived stress and an increased mean of self-esteem compared to the control group. After adjusting baseline characteristics and baseline outcome values, the intervention also significantly improved WBI (B=-6.82, P<0.001), depression (B=-4.17, P<0.001), perceived stress (B=-6.01, P<0.001), and self-esteem (B=5.07, P<0.001).

 The CBGC program effectively reduced WBI, depression, and perceived stress while improving self-esteem among obese youths. This study recommends that group counseling programs be employed as part of a counseling process for obese youth who have experienced WBI.

 Rotavirus is the most common cause of gastroenteritis among children. Currently, four oral live-attenuated vaccines are available to prevent rotavirus infection. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended including rotavirus vaccination in national immunization programs; however, it has not been introduced to the Iranian national immunization program. The study aimed to assess the frequency of rotavirus gastroenteritis in the west of Iran and investigate the necessity of rotavirus vaccination.

Study Design:

 A case series study.

 In this case series study, 284 cases under six years of age who presented with acute gastroenteritis from March 2021 to 2022 to a referral hospital in the west of Iran were evaluated. Data on baseline characteristics, clinical manifestations, results of stool test, ELISA for rotavirus detection, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for genotyping of rotavirus-positive samples were recorded.

 Results showed that the prevalence of rotavirus infection was 36.6%. The highest frequency was observed among children aged 6-12 months and during the autumn. According to the PCR results, G1P[8], G9P[8], G9P[4], and G1P [4] were the dominant genotypes, and 33.75% of samples were infected with multiple rotavirus genotypes.

 The study highlights the considerable prevalence of rotavirus infection among cases of acute gastroenteritis in children under six years of age who were referred to a referral hospital in the west of Iran and the high diversity of rotavirus genotypes in the targeted community. Consequently, physicians and health policymakers should prioritize strategies for the prevention and control of this infection, particularly by considering the rotavirus vaccine as a priority for the Iranian national immunization program.

Exposure to air pollution is a major health problem worldwide. This study aimed to investigate the effect of the level of air pollutants and meteorological parameters with their related lag time on the transmission and severity of coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) using machine learning (ML) techniques in Shiraz, Iran.

Study Design:

 An ecological study.

In this ecological research, three main ML techniques, including decision trees, random forest, and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), have been applied to correlate meteorological parameters and air pollutants with infection transmission, hospitalization, and death due to COVID-19 from 1 October 2020 to 1 March 2022. These parameters and pollutants included particulate matter (PM2), sulfur dioxide (SO2 ), nitrogen dioxide (NO2 ), nitric oxide (NO), ozone (O3 ), carbon monoxide (CO), temperature (T), relative humidity (RH), dew point (DP), air pressure (AP), and wind speed (WS).

Based on the three ML techniques, NO2 (lag 5 day), CO (lag 4), and T (lag 25) were the most important environmental features affecting the spread of COVID-19 infection. In addition, the most important features contributing to hospitalization due to COVID-19 included RH (lag 28), T (lag 11), and O3 (lag 10). After adjusting for the number of infections, the most important features affecting the number of deaths caused by COVID-19 were NO2 (lag 20), O3 (lag 22), and NO (lag 23).

Our findings suggested that epidemics caused by COVID-19 and (possibly) similarly viral transmitted infections, including flu, air pollutants, and meteorological parameters, can be used to predict their burden on the community and health system. In addition, meteorological and air quality data should be included in preventive measures.

 Modeling with methods based on machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence can help understand the complex relationships between ergonomic risk factors and employee health. The aim of this study was to use ML methods to estimate the effect of individual factors, ergonomic interventions, quality of work life (QWL), and productivity on work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) in the neck area of office workers.

Study Design: 

A quasi-randomized control trial.

 To measure the impact of interventions, modeling with the ML method was performed on the data of a quasi-randomized control trial. The data included the information of 311 office workers (aged 32.04±5.34). Method neighborhood component analysis (NCA) was used to measure the effect of factors affecting WMSDs, and then support vector machines (SVMs) and decision tree algorithms were utilized to classify the decrease or increase of disorders.

 Three classified models were designed according to the follow-up times of the field study, with accuracies of 86.5%, 80.3%, and 69%, respectively. These models could estimate most influencer factors with acceptable sensitivity. The main factors included age, body mass index, interventions, QWL, some subscales, and several psychological factors. Models predicted that relative absenteeism and presenteeism were not related to the outputs.

 In this study, the focus was on disorders in the neck, and the obtained models revealed that individual and management interventions can be the main factors in reducing WMSDs in the neck. Modeling with ML methods can create a new understanding of the relationships between variables affecting WMSDs.

 The inflammatory potential of diet may affect carcinogenesis. This study aimed to determine the association between dietary inflammatory index (DII) and the risk of head and neck cancer (HNC), as well as the interaction between DII and cigarette smoking in HNC development within the Iranian population.

Study Design: 

This is a case-control study.

 In this multicenter case-control study, participants’ dietary intake was assessed using a validated 130-item food frequency questionnaire, from which DII was computed. The study recruited 876 new cases from referral hospitals across 10 provinces and 3409 healthy controls who were frequency-matched based on age, gender, and residential place. Logistic regression was used to obtain odds ratios (ORs) for HNC across tertiles of DII, which were adjusted for confounding variables.

 A higher pro-inflammatory diet was associated with an increased risk of all HNC (OR T3 vs. T1 [95% CI]: 1.31 [1.06, 1.62]; P-trend=0.013). There was a significant association between lip and oral cavity cancers and DII (OR T3 vs. T1 [95% CI]: 1.56 [1.16, 1.66]; P-trend=0.004). Furthermore, an inflammatory diet was associated with an increased risk of pharynx cancer (OR T3 vs. T1 [95% CI]: 2.08 [1.14, 3.79]; P-trend=0.02). Additionally, no significant association was observed between DII and larynx cancer, while an interaction was found between DII and tobacco use on the risk of HNC (OR T3 vs. T1 [95% CI]: 2.52 [1.78, 3.57]; P-interaction=0.03).

 DII was positively associated with HNC risk. There was a significant association between DII and the risk of lip, oral cavity, and pharynx cancers. Additionally, there was an interaction between tobacco use and DII in determining the risk of HNC.

In the article titled “The Role of Social Support in Preventing Suicidal Ideations and Behaviors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,”1 published as e00609 on June 1, 2024, in the Journal of Research in Health Sciences, corrections have been made to the author list and affiliations. The second affiliation of the first author, Nahid Darvishi, was omitted. The order of the corresponding author, Mehran Farhadi, has been changed from fourth to second. Additionally, the third author has withdrawn from the article due to personal reasons, prompting adjustments in the order of co-authors and their affiliations. These corrections have been applied to both the PDF and HTML versions of the article.