ABSTRACT
Background: Internationally, there is growing concern about the adverse health effects of mobile phone use by young people. Aim: To determine the pattern of mobile phone use among medical students and determine the potential association between degree of use and self-reported health impacts. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out on 472 medical students in King Abdulaziz University. Self-administered specially designed questionnaire was used to collect data regarding the following: Socio-demographic characteristics, pattern of phone use and self-reported health complaints. Results: The students’ median duration of mobile phone use was 330 min/day and was significantly higher in females (P= 0.04). A positive significant correlation was observed between the health complaints score and the average daily duration of use (r =0.139, P=0.002). Adjusted multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that heavy mobile use was significantly associated with self-reported sleep disturbances, headache (AOR=4.76), fatigue (AOR=4.67), depression (AOR=2.63), nervousness (AOR=1.64), musculoskeletal pain (AOR=2.14) and visual problems (AOR=2.40). Conclusion: mobile phone use occupies a significant part in the daily life of medical students. The heavy use of mobile phone in calling and non-calling activities was associated with a high level of subjective health complaints with dose dependent pattern. After controlling for other important predictors, heavy mobile use was associated with sleep disturbances, headache, depression, nervousness, eye and musculoskeletal problems. Excessive use of mobile phones should be avoided and social awareness increased through health education activities. In addition, employing a speaker-phone device for longer daily use and recommended parental procedures are taken to prevent young people being woken by their mobile phones.
ABSTRACT
Aim: Renal excretion of aluminum is impaired in patients with chronic kidney disease, thereby increasing the risk of toxicity. Our aims were to determine the serum aluminum level in children on regular haemodialysis and to assess the effect of aluminum on PTH and blood parameters. Methodology: This is a case control study was done on 120 children, a group of 60 cases on regular hemodialysis, their ages ranged from 3 to 16 year. They were 27 males (45%) and 33 females (55%) they were selected from the hemodialysis unit and outpatient clinic of Al-Zahraa hospital, AL-Azhar University during the period from January 2014 to September 2014. The studied cases were divided into two groups according to the serum aluminum level; group A< 50 μg/L, and group B > 50 μg/L. Another group of 60 apparently healthy children with matched age and sex with the patient group served as a control. All subjects underwent thorough history taking, clinical examination and the following investigations: complete blood count, blood urea, serum creatinine total serum calcium, serum phosphorus, serum aluminum, ferritin, PTH and aluminum level of drinking water and water for dialysis. Results: In this study serum aluminum level was significantly higher in cases compared with controls, it was (60±20 μg/L) and (20±10 μg/L) respectively (P=.000). Also we found serum PTH was significantly higher while serum calcium was significantly lower in cases compared to controls particularly in children whose aluminum >50 μg/L. We found a significant positive correlation between serum aluminum levels with PTH (r=.50, P=.001). Also our study reported that the aluminum level in both tap water (for drinking) and water from the dialysis unit their levels were 300 μg/L and 1 μg/L respectively. Conclusion: Drinking water is the main source of high aluminum level in our study and its overload is still a serious health problem in hemodialysis children. So aluminum should be diminished from drinking water to reach the permissible limit; routine monitoring of aluminum level and new modalities of hemodialysis is recommended.