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The Covid-19 pandemic has been a problem in recent years. The first FDA approved drug in the treatment of this disease was Remdesivir, which, despite its many benefits, has harmful effects on the liver. Melatonin and N-acetylcysteine, two drugs that have previously been shown to protect the liver with their antioxidant properties, may reduce the hepatic toxicity induced by Remdesivir. Given that few studies have been performed on the role of oral melatonin and N-acetylcysteine on reducing the hepatic adverse effects of Remdesivir, we decided to conduct this clinical trial study. In this double-blind, randomized clinical trial study, 70 patients with Covid-19 in Besat Hospital, Tehran, Iran, during 2022, were enrolled. Patients were randomly divided into two groups of 35 each. Both groups were administered Remdesivir with same protocol. In this period, the first group received N-acetylcysteine 600 mg tablet twice daily and melatonin 6 mg tablet at bedtime. The second group received placebos with the same appearance. Liver enzymes of all patients were serially evaluated and then demographic and lab datas were extracted. Mann-Whitney test, Chi-square test and independent t-test were used for analysis of data. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. No significant difference was seen between case and control groups regarding age, gender, BMI and severity of the disease at the time of hospital admission (P > 0.05), which shows a random classification of two groups. The mean AST, ALT, ALP and CBC of patients in case group decreased compared to the control group but the difference was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). In patients with COVID-19 that received Remdesivir, oral administration of melatonin and NAC did not significantly decrease either the patients liver enzymes or CBC level in 6 day of enrolment compared with placebo. Further studies with longer duration and different doses are recommended. © 2023 by the authors. Licensee ResearchersLinks Ltd, England, UK. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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Federal regulations require employees to protect themselves from electrical hazards when working at substations. Such protections, commonly called personal protective equipment (PPE), vary with the hazard types and nature of exposure or delivery. Over the past decades, personal injuries and fatalities from electrical hazards have remained relatively common despite regular risk assessments and controls. One reason for this is that adequate PPE is not appropriately used. Easy-to-deploy strategies to detect proper use of PPE for electrical hazards are not available. Here, an intelligent detection model is developed to check whether PPE is appropriately worn or not;warning alarms would be triggered when the usage does not follow safety regulations. Arc-flash analysis is employed to determine a reasonable and safe PPE guideline. Eight types of PPE are considered, which cover the major PPE categories utilized in practice, including medical masks recommended for the Covid-19 pandemic. The model's framework utilizes a few-shot based graph neural network (GNN) technique to detect PPE. In contrast to prior data-driven models, only 50 images were collected for each PPE type, a relatively small number compared with state-of-the-art research. The proposed model was trained with diversified samples within multiple environments, resulting in a robust, efficient, intelligent detection model with probability of similarity in the range of 79%- 100%. To tackle the existing issues of computer-vision based PPE detection models, some technical suggestions on preserving personal privacy and PPE labels are provided. IEEE
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Background: Recent data from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) confirm that diabetes, along with advanced age, is an important risk factor for adverse prognosis. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the status of COVID-19 prevention behaviors and related beliefs among diabetic patients in Hamadan province using protection motivation theory (PMT).
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Background: Prior studies demonstrated glomerular tuft staining for annexin A3 (Anxa3), a marker of parietal epithelial cells (PECs), and cathepsin C (Ctsc), a master regulatory protease, distinguishing primary collapsing glomerulopathy (CG) from other glomerular diseases. We hypothesized these staining patterns would differentiate COVID-19 associated CG (COVID-19+/CG+) from COVID-19(+) without CG (COVID-19+/CG-). Method(s): Biopsy sections used were from patients with COVID-19 infections and a pathologist-based tissue diagnoses including CG (COVID-19+/CG+;n=4) or lacking CG diagnosis (COVID-19+/CG-;n=6) were stained for Anxa3 and Ctsc using published protocols. HIVAN-associated CG (n=4) biopsies were used as a secondary CG control. Historical controls data for non-CG biospies (PMID:32561683). Glomerular staining was tabulated as for PEC staining, phenotypic characteristics of normal and activated (enlarged nuclei, hypertrophic/enlarged cuboidal shape cells, vacuolization) PECs, and for glomerular tuft to Bowman's capsule adhesions or cellular PEC bridges. Globally scarred glomerulii were omitted from analysis. Serial section staining was used to demonstrate Anxa3 and Ctsc co-localization. Differences in the mean (i) number of glomeruli staining OR (ii) glomerular tuft area stained for Anxa3 and Ctsc per biopsy were compared by one-tailed t-test assuming an increase in staining in CG over non-glomerular disease. A p-value <0.05 was used for statistical significance. Result(s): All COVID-19+/CG+ and HIVAN patients with CG demonstrated extensive Anxa3 and Ctsc glomerular tuft staining. The frequency of glomerular tuft Anxa3 and Ctsc staining and percent glomerular area was significantly (p<0.05) increased in biopsies with COVID-19+/CG+, compared to COVID-19+/CG- (log2FC 2.8-2.9). No statistical difference in frequency or area stained for Anxa3 and Ctsc was observed between COVID-19+/CG+ and HIVAN-associated CG. Conclusion(s): Anxa3 and Ctsc glomerular tuft expression is increased significantly in COVID-19 and HIVAN patients with CG, mirroring our findings in primary CG. These data support the hypotheses that (a) migration of activated PECs into the glomerular tuft is a prevalent event in both primary CG and virus-associated secondary CG, and (b) glomerular Anxa3 or Ctsc may be theragnostic biomarkers of CG.
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Background/Purpose: Due to the pandemic of COVID-19 and the need to pay attention to the older adults as one of the most vulnerable groups, this study aimed to determine the effects of educational programs based on the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) as non-pharmaceutical intervention in promoting protective behaviors against COVID-19 among the older adults in Hamadan. Method(s): The present study was a randomized controlled trial performed in 2021 on 80 older adults visiting retirement centers in Hamadan. Participants were randomly assigned to experimental (n=40) and control groups (n=40). The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire including demographic variables and constructs of PMT which were completed before and two months after the intervention. The intervention consisted of four sessions implemented for the experimental group. The collected data was analyzed in SPSS-16 using Chi-square, Mann-Whitney, and Wilcoxon tests. Result(s): There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of all demographic variables and theoretical constructs before the educational intervention. After the educational intervention, there was a significant difference in the constructs of perceived severity (P=0.012), perceived response efficiency (P=0.009), perceived self-efficacy (P=0.021), and perceived response cost (P <0.001) after the intervention. No significant changes were reported in the control group (P >0.05). Also, results showed that there was no significant difference in the mean of COVID-19 preventive behaviors between the two groups after the educational intervention (P >0.05). Conclusion(s): The results showed that the use of educational intervention as non-pharmaceutical intervention based on the PMT was an effective approach to perform preventive behaviors against infectious diseases such as COVID-19. Copyright © 2022, Full Universe Integrated Marketing Limited. All rights reserved.
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Background and Objectives: The prevalence of the Covid-19 epidemic in Iran is associated with many psychological and social effects. This study aimed to examine the association between COVID-19 media literacy and the fear of COVID-19 among students during the coronavirus crisis. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional was conducted on 300 students of Hamadan Universities which were selected with a multistage sampling method. To collect the data, the COVID-19 media literacy scale (C-19MLS) and the fear of COVID-19 scale (FCV-19S) were used. Data were obtained using the SPSS software Version 23 and descriptive statistics, T-test, ANOVA, Chi-square, Pearson Correlation test, and regression analysis test were used. Results: As the study results, the mean score of the Fear of COVID-19 was 11.88 ± 4.34;also, the mean score of COVID-19 media literacy was 71.64 ± 11.36, respectively. The Fear of COVID-19 had a negative and significant correlation with the dimensions and total COVID-19 media literacy (P <0.001). Based on the simple linear regression analysis results, COVID-19 media literacy (β=-0.23) and usage of social media apps (β=0.58) were identified as predictors of the fear of COVID-19. Conclusion: The findings of this study showed that the COVID-19 media literacy was inadequate in participants. Also, COVID-19 media literacy was related to the Fear of COVID-19. Therefore, designing and implementing educational interventions to empower students in the field of media literacy related to COVID-19 and media consumption regime seems to be necessary to help reduce anxiety and stress and increase the immune system against COVID-19. © 2022, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved.
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INTRODUCTION In recent decades, hookah use has been considered a common method of smoking. Since hookah use is one of the factors exacerbating the coronavirus disease, COVID-19, the present study aimed to determine the factors affecting hookah smoking during the COVID-19 pandemic using protection motivation theory (PMT). METHODS This is a cross-sectional study and conducted on 560 people aged ≥13 years living in Hamedan. Data were collected electronically using a researcher-made questionnaire consisting of three parts. The first, second, and third parts included demographic information, questions about hookah use, and information about the constructs of PMT, respectively. Data were analyzed using SPSS 22 software. RESULTS The mean age of the participants was 28.8 ± 9.6 years. In the regression analysis of perceived reward structures (β=0.378), perception sensitivity (β=0.208), self-efficacy (β=0.0166) were respectively the important predictors for the intention of hookah use behavior. Overall, the constructs of the PMT explain 71% of the variance of the changes in the behavioral intention construct in the participants. No significant relationship was observed between self-efficacy constructs (r=0.039) and perceived cost. The prevalence of hookah use before the COVID-19 pandemic in participants was 41.8%, which decreased to 35% during the COVID-19 pandemic. CONCLUSIONS A greater correlation between the constructs of the PMT concerning protective behaviors against COVID-19 emphasizes designing educational programs based on this theory and the role of media to increase people’s knowledge in preventive behaviors.
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Digital vaccination passports are being proposed by various governments internationally. Trust, scalability and security are all key challenges in implementing an online vaccine passport. Initial approaches attempt to solve this problem by using centralised systems with trusted authorities. However, sharing vaccine passport data between different organisations, regions and countries has become a major challenge. A platform for creating, storing and verifying digital COVID-19 vaccine certifications is presented, making use of InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to guarantee that there is no single point of failure and to allow data to be securely distributed globally. Blockchain and smart contracts are also integrated into the platform to explicitly determine policies and log access rights to the passport data while ensuring all actions are audited and verifiably immutable. Our proposed platform realises General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements in terms of user consent, data encryption, data erasure and accountability obligations. We assess the scalability and performance of the platform using IPFS and Blockchain test networks. © 2021 ACM.
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Aims: Throughout the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the role of students in transmitting the infection has received special attention aiming at protecting the younger generation against COVID-19 and other known respiratory diseases. This research aimed to specify factors related to Covid-19 preventing behaviors in high school students. Instrument & Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 2852 students aged 13 to 18 in Hamadan in 2020. Participants were selected using the multistage cluster sampling method. The data were collected with a researcher-made EPPM questionnaire. Data were analyzed statistically by Stata 14.2 software using the Chi-square and Fisher's exact tests. Findings: The vast majority of students (67.02%) were in the danger control response phase. The response efficacy (77.3%) and perceived efficacy (75.3%) had the highest percentage of the mean from the maximum obtainable score among constructs of the model. There was a significant difference between categories of the EPPM model with doing healthy behaviors. Moreover, the proportion of doing health behaviors was significantly higher in students in the danger control phase. Conclusions: The predominance of the perceived threat of COVID-19 on the perceived efficacy affects preventive health behaviors. Therefore, a theory-based behavioral modification program can be developed based on gender among high school students. Higher grade students and poor socioeconomic status require intense educational interventions to modify their hygienic behaviors. © 2021, the Authors.
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Background: The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was first reported in Wuhan, China, and has since then spread worldwide, resulting in a large number of hospitalizations and deaths. To the best of our knowledge, the study about the mental health status (depression, anxiety, and stress) among high school students during COVID-19 has not been performed in Iran. Objective: This study was performed to investigate rates of anxiety, depression, and stress among high school students during the pandemic of COVID- 19. Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed among high school students (12-18 years) from 30 April until 1 June 2020, in Hamadan City, west of Iran. In total, 2852 students contributed to the present study. Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale 21 (DASS-21) was used in this study. Statistical analyses were conducted in STATA 14 with a significant level of 0.05. Results: The present study showed that although stress status was normal among most high school students (70.3%), the status of anxiety and depression was high. The boys had reported a higher proportion of normal status of depression (51.62% vs. 44.97%), anxiety (31.71% vs. 26.91%), and stress (77.66% vs. 66.10%) compared to the girls. Also, students in grades 7-9 had reported a higher percentage of normal status in all three dimensions of stress, anxiety, and depression. Conclusion: These findings suggest that as rates of depression and anxiety are high, schoolage children may benefit from policymakers and other authorities' active role.
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The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak has been associated with many psychological and social effects, followed by a rise of fake news and false information about the condition. This study's main aim was to deeply understand people's experiences and precise opinions about social media information on COVID-19. This qualitative study was conducted to examine the COVID-19 social media literacy using the content analysis. Participants in the study were 20 people from Hamadan Province, Iran. Data were analyzed using the MAXQDA software version 2010. Considering the results for the volume of social media literature about COVID-19, 21 subcategories and five categories were obtained. The five categories included purpose with three subcategories such as,sales for economic gain", constructedness with five subcategories such as profiteering,advertising companies", audience with one subcategory such as,all people", format with five subcategories such as, highlighting the disease consequences", and lifestyles with seven subcategories such as, drinking alcohol". Familiarity with individuals' views based on culture and context for designing and planning educational literacy programs for media skills and competence in the new media age for distinguishing between fake and credible COVID-19 media messages and critically evaluating media content for all people is essentialespecially in the new media infodemic ecosystem. The themes obtained in the study can be used for designing educational interventions and appropriate assessment tools as well as promoting health media literacy in the field.
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The COVID19 Pandemic has highlighted our dependence on online services (from government, e-commerce/retail, and entertainment), often hosted over external cloud computing infrastructure. The users of these services interact with a web interface rather than the larger distributed service provisioning chain that can involve an interlinked group of providers. The data and identity of users are often provided to service provider who may share it (or have automatic sharing agreement) with backend services (such as advertising and analytics). We propose the development of compliance-aware cloud application engineering, which is able to improve transparency of personal data use-particularly with reference to the European GDPR regulation. Key compliance operations and the perceived implementation challenges for the realization of these operations in current cloud infrastructure are outlined. © 1997-2012 IEEE.
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Aims Health workers are at high risk of novel coronavirus (Covid-19) and preventive behaviors play an important role in reducing the incidence and deaths of this infection. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate COVID-19 Preventive Behaviors and its Related Beliefs among Health Workers of Hamadan province using the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM). Instruments & Methods This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 950 health workers in Hamadan, in 2020 who were selected by multistage random sampling method. The data were collected using a questionnaire including demographic information and EPPM constructs. Data were analyzed in STATA 14 using descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation test. Findings Behaviors of avoiding contact with others and frequent hand washing with soap and water with 97.8% and 95.3%, respectively, had the highest frequency among health personnel. The condition of EPPM constructs was evaluated at a relatively favorable level. Also, 46.0% of health personnel were involved in the risk perception process. Conclusions It is necessary to improve the level of perceived self-efficacy of employees and also to emphasize the effectiveness of the recommended strategies in the prevention of Covid-19 disease. Copyright © 2020, ASP Ins.
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This study was conducted to predict the preventive behaviours of healthcare workers (HCWs) towards COVID-19 based on the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT). This cross-sectional and analytical study was conducted on 761 HCWs in Hamadan, Iran, using multi-stage random sampling. The preventive behaviours against COVID-19 among HCWs were assessed at a relatively desirable level. Based on the PMT, threat and coping appraisal were predictors of protection motivation to conduct COVID-19 preventive behaviours (P<0.001). The intention was also predictive of COVID-19 preventive behaviours (P<0.001). Consideration of personnel's self-efficacy and their knowledge regarding the effectiveness of protective behaviours in designing staff training programmes are recommended.