Establishing the reliability and validity of the Zagazig Depression Scale in a UK student population: an online pilot study

Background: It is thought that depressive disorders will be the second leading cause of disability worldwide by 2020. Recently, there is a steady increase in the number of university students diagnosed and treated as depression patients. It can be assumed that depression is a serious mental health problem for university students because it affects all age groups of the students either younger or older equally. The current study aims to establish the reliability and validity of the Zagazig Depression scale in a UK sample. Methods: The study was a cross-sectional online survey. A sample of 133 out of 275 undergraduate students from a range of UK Universities in the academic year 2008-2009, aged 20.3 ± 6.3 years old were recruited. A modified back translated version of Zagazig Depression scale was used. In order to validate the Zagazig Depression scale, participants were asked to complete the Patient Health Questionnaire. Statistical analysis includes Kappa analysis, Cronbach's alpha, Spearman's correlation analysis, and Confirmatory Factor analysis. Results: Using the recommended cut-off of Zagazig Depression scale for possible minor depression it was found that 30.3% of the students have depression and higher percentage was identified according to the Patient Health Questionnaire (37.4%). Females were more depressed. The mean ZDS score was 8.3 ± 4.2. Rates of depression increase as students get older. The reliability of The ZDS was satisfactory (Cronbach's alpha was .894). For validity, ZDS score was strongly associated with PHQ, with no significant difference (p-value > 0.05), with strong positive correlation (r = +.8, p-value < 0.01). Conclusion: The strong, significant correlation between the PHQ and ZDS, along with high internal consistency of the ZDS as a whole provides evidence that ZDS is a reliable measure of depressive symptoms and is promising for the use of the translated ZDS in a large-scale cross-culture study

Fast Diagnosis of Men's Fertility Using Raman Spectroscopy Combined with Chemometric Methods: an Experimental Study

Background: Idiopathic infertile men suffer from unexplained male infertility; they are infertile despite having a normal semen analysis, a normal history, and physical examination, and when female infertility factor has been ruled out. Objective: The present study aimed to develop a metabolic fingerprinting methodology using Raman spectroscopy combined with Chemometrics to detect idiopathic infertile men vs. fertile ones by seminal plasma. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, the seminal plasma of 26 men including 13 fertile and 13 with unexplained infertility who reffered to, Avicenna Infertility Clinic, 2018, Tehran, Iran, have been investigated. The seminal metabolomic fingerprinting was evaluated using Raman spectrometer from 100 to 4250 cm-1. The principal component analysis and discriminate analysis methods were used. Results: The total of 26 samples were divided into 20 training and 6 test sets. The Principal component analysis score plot of the training set showed that the data were perfectly divided into two sides of the plot, which statistically approves the direct effect of semen metabolome changes on the Raman spectra. A classification model was constructed by linear discriminant analysis using the training set and evaluated by the test group which resulted in completely correct classification. While three of the six test samples appeared in the fertile group, the rest appeared in the infertile as expected. Conclusion: Metabolic fingerprinting of seminal plasma using Raman spectroscopy combined with chemometric classification methods accurately discriminated between the idiopathic infertile men and the fertile ones and predicted their fertility type. Key words: Semen analysis, Fertility, Raman spectroscopy, Metabolomics