Prevalence of anemia and related factors among women in Turkey

Objective: To determine the prevalence of anemia and related factors among women in Turkey

Methods: This descriptive study was conducted at the outpatient clinics of the Department of Internal Medicine, Ege University Medical School. Randomly selected women were given questionnaires regarding their socio-demographic and obstetric characteristics. The data were coded and analyzed using SPSS version 17.0 software. Statistical analyses with 95% confidence intervals were considered to be significant if p<0.05

Results: The study results showed an anemia prevalence of 27.8% in the study sample. Among all anemia diagnoses among the participants, 56.0% were determined to have iron deficiency, 37.1% iron-deficiency anemia, and 6.9% severe anemia. It was observed that anemia was detected among women who were 15-49 years of age [p<0.05], menstruating [p<0.05], had a history of Cesarean section [p<0.05], and had not entered menopause [p<0.05]. Based on forward-stepwise-logistic regression analysis, the most important parameter was concluded to be age group, which was followed by menopausal status

Conclusions: The study results suggest that the anemia prevalence rate is specifically higher among women of reproductive age. To prevent anemia at a low cost, it is recommended to provide women with relevant information and well-planned interactive educational programs

Comparison of inflammatory breast cancer and noninflammatory breast cancer in Western Turkey

The study was aimed at investigating the clinical and biological features and survival outcomes of patients who were treated for metastatic inflammatory and noninflammatory breast carcinoma. One hundred and sixty-seven metastatic breast cancer patients were enrolled into this study and divided into two groups: inflammatory [n = 46] and noninflammatory [n = 121]. The clinical and hormone receptor status, c-erbB-2, Ki-67, and p53 expression, based on the immunohistochemical staining patterns, were compared between the two groups. The inflammatory breast carcinoma group had a younger patient population, higher rate of adjuvant anthracycline therapy, number of lymph node metastases, rates of extranodal extension and c-erbB-2 overexpression than noninflammatory breast cancer patients [p < 0.05]. With regard to survival, there were slightly better outcomes in the noninflammatory breast carcinoma group [30 months] compared to the inflammatory breast carcinoma group [23 months], but the difference was not statistically significant [p = 0.08]. While survival results of p53-negative inflammatory and noninflammatory breast carcinoma patients were similar, p53-positive survival was significantly worse [p < 0.05] in inflammatory breast cancer carcinoma patients. Because of c-erbB-2 overexpression in inflammatory breast carcinoma patients, treatment options including trastuzumab could have given better survival outcomes. Survival of inflammatory breast carcinoma patients with a low p53 immunohistochemistry staining appeared similar to that for noninflammatory breast carcinoma. For this reason, new treatment options are needed especially in inflammatory breast carcinoma patients with high p53 positivity