Background & Objectives: Mental Health is a phenomenon which has been considered by psychologists, medical doctors and religious scholars and it is a combination of physical, social and cognitive factors. Due to the effectiveness of teaching coping skills in increasing mental health, this study was done to achieve the effect of teaching coping skills in providing mental health in students of Ardabil University of Medical Sciences.       

Methods: Due to the nature and aims of the study, the study method was experimental research method. The samples of the present study comprised all male and female students (n=112) at Ardabil University of medical Sciences in 2006-2007 and gained 23 or more in GHQ-28 questionnaire (which evaluates four subscales of anxiety, depression, physical symptoms, and disorder of social functioning). At the next stage the samples (i.e. 80 female and male students) were selected randomly and divided in to two groups. Then, coping skills were taught to the experimental group for 4 weeks (two sessions in a week) and no variable was exposed to the control group during this period. At the end, the data from 62 (Dropt=18 case) individuals were analyzed by independent t test.   

Results: the results showed that teaching coping skills affects on decreasing mental disorders symptoms especially somatization of symptoms and anxiety of students suspected to the mental disorder (R< 0.001). But the teaching coping skills do not affect on decreasing depression and disorder of social functioning of students.

Conclusion: This study showed that teaching coping skills is a good method in decreasing mental disorders symptoms among the students suspected to the mental disorder. Therefore it is suggested that in order to prevent and decrease mental disorders symptoms, the coping skills should be taught to students.

 Background & Objectives: The prevalence of diabetes and its different methods of treatment have significantly been increased in the last two decades. The actual effect of these treatments is a common topic in the patients’ health and quality of life among these patients has a considerable importance in the community medicine. This study was designed to indicate the quality of life in the diabetic type II patients.

  Methods: This was a cross-sectional, descriptive analytic study in 2004 on 110 type 2 diabetic patients who had referred to Bu Ali Hospital in Ardabil. The patients were randomly selected and took the SF-36 Questionnaire and in the end the data were analyzed by SPSS.

  Results: The average age of the patients was 52.5 with the standard deviation of 11.3 years. 73 of the patients were female (66.4%) and rest of them were male. The average period of sickness among diabetics was 8 years from the time of diagnosis with a standard deviation of 6.2 years. The average of duration of therapy was 7.7 years with 6.1 years standard deviation. 51 patients (46.36%) had the history of hospitalization. Vitality indicator was low in 39.1% of patients. Social functioning was low in 50% of patients. In general, by adding up the quality of life’s various indexes scores based on SF-36 questionnaires standard coefficients, 77% of patients had intermediate and low quality of life.

  Conclusion: According to this study most of the patients in this study had a low quality of life.

  Background & objective : The reason for attacks of wild canines are for hunting or defense or as rabies. Usually in the biting of rabid wolf there are so many victims and the wounds are deeper and more dangerous. The rabies probability in this wonnd is 15 times more than the other bites. This article is a report of 24 bites of a rabid wolf in a short period of time. It is considerable even after 3 years because of the large number of victims and the appropriate measures of health related systems, and lack of mortality .

  Materials and methods: The report consists of 24 wonnded patients from the health center of meshkin Shahr. All of the victims were interviewed, examined and followed up for 3 years.

  Results: In the summer of 2006 a rabid wolf, whose rabies later was confirmed by Pasteur Institute of Iran, attacked 7 contiguous villages in the southern part of Meshkinshahr and 24 of natives were wounded. Mean age of victims was 36.5 years old. The injured organs were as follow: head and face in 21 cases, hands in 12 cases, body and abodomen in 8 cases, neck in 3 case s, leg 3 cases, and buttock 1 case. In 14 cases the wound of claw and teeth were observed. In two cases the attack form was insability in bending fingers and in other cases there weren't any complications. All of the patients were treated with vaccine and anti rabies serum and if necessary with tetabolin. There wasn't any mortality and morbidity reported during the 3-year follow-up.

  Conclusion: T he manner of wolf attack was compatible with the rabid wolf's behavior. No death was reported due to sufficient support, health care centers' awareness, vaccination and serum injection and tetabolin

  Background and objective: Injuries account for 16% of global burden of diseases and causes a great deal of mortality and morbidity. Today, amputation is one of the biggest challenges facing us and may accompany serious functional, psychosocial and personality disorders in communities. Therefore, we decided to assess the causes and types of traumatic amputation in patients referring Ardabil’s Fatemi Educational Hospital from 2005 through 2006.

  Methods and materials: The present study was descriptively & analytically) retrospective in which the data were collected using a questionnaire. Our study population included 218 cases referring Ardabil Fatima educational Hospital for amputation from the beginning of 2005 through the end of 2006.

  Results: In this study, the mean age of injured cases is 28.9±19.1 and men were also injured three times more than women. Most of the cases attended in summer between 8:00 Am -8:00 Pm. The number of cases among city dwellers and residents of rural areas were almost equal and most of the cases (39/6%) were illiterate. Most of the cases were injured outdoors especially in their workplace. The most commonly seen cause of amputation was tools used in farming and husbandry especially mower. Most of the amputations (50/5%) were total and unintentional (99.5%). Most of the injuries were seen in upper extremities (94.5%), hands and especially fingers (97%)�

  conclusion: Based on the obtained results, male workers are at a higher risk. Most of the injuries occurred during the work hours and amputation caused by tools used in farming and husbandry has a high prevalence. This is probably due to the unsafe and old structure of these tools.

 Background and objectives: Long term exposure to high levels of cement dust is one of the most important environmental risk factors in cement industries that adversely affect employee's respiratory system. Provided that achieving sustainable development mainly relies on healthy workers, this study aimed at assessing cement dust concentration and its free SiO₂ content in an Iranian Portland Cement Industry.

 Methods: In a cross - sectional study, airborne dust levels was investigated by collecting 64 personal and 35 environmental samples at both inhalable and respirable dust sizes. Dust concentrations were determined by deploying personal samplers in the breathing zone of workers. SiO₂ fractions were also measured in 4 samples collected from different part of the factory.

 Results: Arithmetic average concentrations of inhalable and respirable dust in personal sampling campaign were 58 and 13 mg m^-3, respectively. Respective values for inhalable and respirable dust in environmental sampling campaign were 154 and 27 mg m^-3. Dust concentrations in 90% of environmental samples and 80% of personal samples exceeded those occupational exposure limit values set for inert dusts i.e. Portland Cement. The average free SiO₂ fraction in analyzed samples was 2.86% varying from 2.33% in "packing and loading" area to 3.67 % in "raw mill" section.

  Conclusion: Free SiO₂ fraction as well as the concentrations of cement dust in this study is much higher than those of occupational exposure limit proposed by Iranian Technical Committee of Occupational Health.

  Background and objectives: Co-morbidity of psychiatric disorders and substance abuse disorder have extensive effects and is accompanied by poorer prognosis. Treatment of this population should be proportionate to their needs. Current study aims to survey personality disorders among referrers to the addiction treatment center, thereby may contributes in achieving a more comprehensive view on encountering them and their treatment.

  Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive study, number of 100 persons with substance abuse disorder were selected by convenient sampling method from referrers to the Reference Center of Addiction Treatment of Ardabil province in 2008. Necessary information was gathered by researcher designed questionnaire (including demographic information) and Million's questionnaire of Personality Disorder. And gathered data were extracted and analyzed by SPSS Software.

  Results: Results analysis showed that the most observed associated disorders in the studied subjects was the Antisocial Personality disorder (0.54%) and Borderline, Histrionic and Narcissistic Personality disorders were located at next ranks, respectively. There was no significant relationship between used drug type and duration of usage to specific personality (p > 0.05). There was significant statistical difference between multi-drug and one-drug abusers addicts, from view point of having or not having personality disorder (p < 0.05).

  Conclusion: Results analysis showed high co-morbidity of personality disorders and drug abuse among addicts (84 %) and lower rate of personality disorders among persons with one drug compared with multi-drug abuse.

  Background & Objectives: Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is the main antigenic structure expressed on the surface of smooth strains of Brucella. It has been shown that Outer membrane vesicle (OMV) of Neisseria meningitidis efficiently promote IgG and IgM response against the administrated antigen as an adjuvant. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of LPS-OMV noncovalent complex in producing of T helper 1 cytokine (IFN-γ) and T helper 2 cytokines (IL-4 and IL-10) in mice.

  Methods: LPS extracted by an optimized method based on hot phenol-water extraction. Groups of six BALB/c mice were injected subcutaneously with LPS alone, LPS with Freund adjuvant and LPS-OMV complex on 0, 14 and 28 days. Levels of IFN-γ, IL-4 and IL-10 were evaluated in spleen cell suspension supernatant by ELISA.

  Result: Immunization with B. abortus LPS significantly induced high level of IFN-γ in comparison to the other groups immunized with LPS-OMV and LPS+ adjuvant (p<0.05). In contrast, lower levels of IL-4 and IL-10 were elicited by LPS in the rest groups. Immunization with the non-covalent complex of B. abortus LPS-N. meningitidis serogroup B OMV caused a significant increase of IL-4 and IL-10 compared with the mice immunized with B. abortus LPS (p<0.05), while the titer of IFN-γ is still significantly higher than IL-4 and IL-10 (p<0.05).

  Conclusion: The raise of IFN-γ following the immunization with all of the compounds (LPS, LPS-OMV non-covalent complex and LPS+adjuvant) indicates the activation of Th₁ population that would be correlated to the clearance of the organism due to the amplification of anti-microbial activity of Polymorphonuclear cells. Low levels of IL-4 and IL-10 following the immunization with all compounds would be a sign of Th₁ responses dominancy or inhibition of Th₂ population proliferation and activity. Such a cytokine pattern would be a sign of the efficiency of brucellosis subunit vaccine because Th₂ responses basically have no role in the immune responses against Brucella and may lead to the persistence of intracellular infection.

  Background & objectives: Thrombocytopeniais, defined as a platelet count of less than 150,000/L complicates 7 to 10% of all pregnancies. Etiology of thrombocytopenia in pregnancy may include a ranging from benign disorders such as gestational thrombocytopenia to life threatening syndromes such as the HELLP (Hemolysis, Elevated liver Enzymes, Low Platelet count). The aim of this study was to evaluate frequency of thrombocytopenia in pregnancy among pregnantsrefered to Tonekabon health centers during 2009 .

  Methods: In a cross-sectional study, 150 normal pregnants bearing third trimester and refered to Tonekabon health centers were selected by random simple sampling. Patients´ demographic information and history were obtaied and CBC (complete blood count) test was done. Those pregnants suffered from thrombocytopenia were refered to a hematologist for compeleting tests if needed. Data analysis was done by SPSS 11.5 and chi-square test and p<0.05 was considered as signifcant difference .

  Results: The Prevalence of thrombocytopenia in pregnancy was 12.66% and the highest percent of thrombocytopenia (68%) was observed among nullipars. The cause of 95% of thrombocytopenia in pregnancy was gestational thrombocytopenia and 5% were due to ITP (Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Purpura). The pregnants who suffered from gestational thrombocytopenia didn’t have any problems and no need to treatment but those who had been experienced ITP, used venous immunoglobin during labor for treatment .

  Conclusion: Gestational thrombocytopenia is the most common cause of the thrombocytopenia in pregnancy and isn’t dangerous for mother and fetus. So, it is no need to be done any intervention .

  Background & objectives: The hand is one of the sensivitive organs of the body. The hand injuries usually occur in workers and are one of the most common causes of disabilies. The aim of this study was to investigate the causes of the hand injuries leading to defect among industrial workers and farmers’ reffered to emergency department of Fatemi hospital in Ardabil.

  Methods: In a cross-sectional study, from January 2009 to Agust 2010, 100 patients with hand injuries were included. The data were collected by the chek list including: category of severity, time and type of incident, and location and cause of the injuri and then were analyzed statistically by Chi-square test.

  Results : Most of the industrial workers (58%) ranging as 20–29 years old and had 38 years as an average. Sixty two percent of them were working more than 8 hours per day and 64.7% experienced severe injuries in their hands. Amputation showed to be the most common injury in this group. Most of the farmers (30%) were in age group 20-29 years and from them 70% were working less than 8 hours per day. In this group, 54% of injuries occurred in left hand and the most common type of injuries was amputation (54%).

  Conclusion: The highest incidence of hand injuries has been shown to occur among industrial workers with 28 years as mean and working for more than 8 hours per day without any formal training before starting to work. So, it seems to be need we use the expert workers with the high level background and don’t use adolescents under 15 years.