Review article: Drought as a continuum – memory effects in interlinked hydrological, ecological, and social systems

Droughts are often long-lasting phenomena, without a distinct start or end and with impacts cascading across sectors and systems, creating long-term legacies. Nevertheless, our current perceptions and management of droughts and their impacts are often event-based, which can limit the effective assessment of drought risks and reduction of drought impacts. Here, we advocate for changing this perspective and viewing drought as a hydrological–ecological–social continuum. We take a systems theory perspective and focus on how “memory” causes feedback and interactions between parts of the interconnected systems at different timescales. We first discuss the characteristics of the drought continuum with a focus on the hydrological, ecological, and social systems separately, and then we study the system of systems. Our analysis is based on a review of the literature and a study of five cases: Chile, the Colorado River basin in the USA, northeast Brazil, Kenya, and the Rhine River basin in northwest Europe. We find that the memories of past dry and wet periods, carried by both bio-physical (e.g. groundwater, vegetation) and social systems (e.g. people, governance), influence how future drought risk manifests. We identify four archetypes of drought dynamics: impact and recovery, slow resilience building, gradual collapse, and high resilience–big shock. The interactions between the hydrological, ecological, and social systems result in systems shifting between these types, which plays out differently in the five case studies. We call for more research on drought preconditions and recovery in different systems, on dynamics cascading between systems and triggering system changes, and on dynamic vulnerability and maladaptation. Additionally, we advocate for more continuous monitoring of drought hazards and impacts, modelling tools that better incorporate memories and adaptation responses, and management strategies that increase societal and institutional memory. This will help us to better deal with the complex hydrological–ecological–social drought continuum and identify effective pathways to adaptation and mitigation

PREVALENCE OF ASTHMA, RELATED SYMPTOMS AND RISK FACTORS IN CHILDREN YOUNGER THAN 5 YEARS

Asthma is the most prevalent chronic disease in childhood. To determine the prevalence of asthma and related symptoms in children younger than 5 years, a survey was performed by interviewing mothers of 617 children during spring 2001. The interview comprised of two parts. The first part contained children characteristics including age, sex, maternal age at the child birth, child history of atopy, maternal history of smoking during pregnancy, existence of household smoker, history of family asthma or family atopy. The second part contained asthma section of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) questionnaire. The overall cumulative and 12 month prevalences of wheezing were 21.9% and 19.4%, respectively. The prevalences of exercise-induced wheezing, dry cough without respiratory infections or physician-diagnosed asthma were 18.9%, 11.8% and 3.9%,respectively. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed a higher prevalence of history of wheezing or exercise-induced wheezing in male sex and in the children with positive history of atopy. Persistent cough unrelated to respiratory infections was strongly associated with the positive history of atopy in the children or maternal age at the child birth less than 20 yr or more than 30 yr. Furthermore a physician-diagnosed asthma was significantly associated with positive history of atopy in child. The results suggest a relatively high prevalence of history of wheezing or current and exercise-induced wheezing, but underdiagnosis of asthma among studied children needs more studies to be confirmed

A study of circumcision prevalence and complications in under 5 year old boys in Galleno village-Shahre Ray, Jan 1997

To determine circumcision prevalence and complications in under 5 year old boys. We assessed 181 boys in a cross sectional study at a rutal area in Tehran suburbs, in Jan 1997. Data were collected by an interview about age, circumcision age and method, type of complications, nationality and parent literacy. 126 boys (69%) were circumcised, (mean 12 months). Only 27 of them (21.4%) were circumcised in neonatal period. 62 boys (49.2%) were circumcised with ring methods (plastibell or clamp), 54 boys (42.9%) with surgical methods and the others (7.9%) with nonmendical methods (traditional). Complications were 9.5% (16) and the higher circumcision age was related significantly with higher complications (P<0.04). In our study was no complication in the boys who circumcised under six months. Complications prevalence were high (9.5%). In neonatal period 34% (9) and in postneonatal period 53% (52) of boys were circumcised with inappropriate methods with age. The most common complications were local infection (43%

Demographic aspects, clinical characteristics, and therapeutic approaches in geriatric psoriasis: A study from a tertiary center

Geriatric psoriasis, due to its unusual clinical manifestations and higher rates of systemic complications in this age group, is a challenging issue for dermatologists. Therefore, we aimed to provide an overview of the epidemiological, clinical, and therapeutic consequences among patients aged over 60 years with psoriasis in a referral center in Iran. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 156 patients over 60 years with the definitive diagnosis of psoriasis that were referred to our center between 2015 and 2019. By reviewing the recorded files of the patients, baseline characteristics including demographics, underlying comorbidities, age of disease onset, clinical type of the disease, clinical manifestations, and therapeutic approaches were extracted. The most common clinical feature was plaque type (73.1) followed by pustular type (10.9). The most frequent involved zone was the lower extremities (84.6). Most of the patients were treated topically (87.1), while as the most frequent systemic approaches, methotrexate and acitretin were considered for 74.4 and 60.3, respectively. A significantly higher mean age at disease onset was found in female patients compared to male patients. The plaque type was more prevalent in men than in women. Also, the chance of nail involvement was 2.43 times higher in men than in women (p = 0.011, 95CI: 1.22�4.84). The disease duration was significantly longer in patients suffering from plaque compared to those without this feature. Conversely, those with palmoplantar type experienced shorter disease duration. Psoriatic arthritis was also revealed in patients of lower ages. As in other societies, in our society, clinical characteristics, disease involvement patterns, as well as considered treatment approaches, can be influenced by demographic characteristics. © 2022 Wiley Periodicals LLC