ABSTRACT
Background: Determining the inequality in health and the gap level among various socio-economic groups and factors affecting it were always concerns of most politicians and social scientists. This study investigated inequality in utilization of health care among Yazd residents in 2014
Methods: This analytic and cross-sectional study was conducted in 2014. The participants were all households of Yazd. The data were collected through a three part questionnaire including demographic factors, socio-economic factors, and utilization of health services. The number of samples was estimated to be 1037 households selected by random stratified sampling. After administrating the questionnaire in the form of interview, data were entered into the SPSS software. Later, factor analysis method was carried out and participants were categorized based on their social and economical status. Afterwards, using the logistic regression method, the correlation among variables was calculated and finally, for measuring the concentration index, the stratified data were fed into Stata11 software version 12/SE and analyzed
Results: According to the findings, there was no meaningful inequality in the distribution of contagious and non-contagious decreases in the population under study. Inequality in utilization of services for inpatient and outpatients during the past 6 months in the five socio-economic groups was significant [P-value = 0.000]. This shows that accumulation of visits occurred in richer groups of society. Also, it can be claimed that self-treatment has greater accumulation in the poorer quintiles [CI = - 0.09]
Conclusion: Inequality in benefitting from health services reflects the economical situation of households. As a result, it is expected that by taking steps to improve the living conditions, the equity in service utilization will be increased
ABSTRACT
Some physicochemical parameters of honey have been introduced by the International Honey Commission to evaluate its quality and origin but processes such as heating and filtering can affect these parameters. In traditional Iranian medicine, deslagging process involves boiling honey in an equal volume of water and removing the slag formed during process. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of deslagging process on parameters of color intensity, diastase evaluation, electrical conductivity, pH, free acidity, refractive index, hydroxy methyl furfural [HMF], proline and water contents according to the International Honey Committee [IHC] standards. The results showed that deslagged honey was significantly different from control honey in terms of color intensity, pH, diastase number, HMF and proline content. It can be concluded that the new standards are needed to regulate deslagged honey
Subject(s)
Chemical Phenomena , Medicine, TraditionalABSTRACT
Boophilus genus ticks are responsible for transferring some pathogens and reducing production factors in cattle. Tropomysin [TPM] protein has actin regulator activity and playing important role in immune and allergic reactions. The main goal is to determine different aspects of phylogenetic, similarity, homology, structure and allergenicity of TPM protein. In prior study, we identified TPM by using Mass-spectrometry in Boophilus anulatus larva proteins extraction. Analysis by NCBI and Mascot software showed complete similarity of this protein with Boophilus microplus. TPM Blasting, invertebrates TPM sequences retrieval, aligning and analyzing of conserved and variable regions along sequences were next steps. Also, construction the phylogenetic tree, overall mean distances estimation, homology protein secondary structure, allergencity analysis was achieved. The most similar sequences to Boophilus genus TPM are Haemaphysalis sp., Scolopendra sp. and etc., respectively. The multiple sequence alignment showed that conserved and variable regions stretched in different part of TPM. The close relationships in Phylogenetic tree between Ticks and Mites were seen, although the TPM sequences in ticks are more similar to each other than to mites and assume as the nearest relatives. Insects TPM like worms, located in two separated clades, and Trichinella spiralis in worm clades are more related taxa to members of ticks and mites groups. Furthermore, overall mean distances over sequence pairs reflects TPM conservation during speciation. TPM has high homology in different species and has two domain of ?-helix that cannot form disulfide bonds. Finally, allergenicity analysis by separated and hybrid approach showed it undoubted is allergen and candidates some peptides as responsible for allergenicity of TPM. The comprehensive analysis of TPM has never been easy, especially when we attempt to make statements from different aspects about this protein. Our study revealed the some unique and valuable aspects of TPM protein of Boophilus genus, and will help to further studies on mentioned protein
ABSTRACT
Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture, known as HSOPS, is an internationally well known and widely used tool for measuring patient safety culture in hospitals. It includes 12 dimensions with positive and negative wording questions. The distribution of these questions in different dimensions is uneven and provides the risk of acquiescence bias. The aim of this study was to assess the questionnaire against this bias. Three hundred nurses were assigned into study and control groups randomly. Short form of HSOPS was distributed in the control group and totally reversed form of it was given to the study group. Percent positive scores and t-test were applied for data analysis. Statistical analyses were conducted using SPSS Version 16. Finally a total of 272 nurses completed the questionnaire. All dimensions with positive wording items in both groups had higher scores compared with their negative worded format. The first dimension "organizational learning and continued improvement" which had the only statistically significant difference, got 16.2% less score in the study group comparing the other group. In addition six out of 18 differences in questions were statistically significant. The popular and widely used HSOPS is subject to acquiescence bias. The bias might lead to exaggerate the status of some patient safety culture composites. Balancing the number of positive and negative worded items in each composite could mitigate the mentioned bias and provide a more valid estimation of different elements of patient safety culture