ramadan fasting and infectious diseases a systematic review

Ramadan represents the fourth of the five pillars of the Islamic creed. Although patients are exempted from observing this duty, they may be eager to share this moment of the year with their peers. However, there are no guidelines that can help physicians to address the concerns of patients with infectious diseases fasting during Ramadan. For this purpose, we performed a systematic review. of 51 articles. Our main findings are that: 1) patients suffering from diabetes at risk of developing infectious complications should not fast; 2) Ramadan fasting has little impact on diarrheal patients; 3) HIV represents a challenge, and ad hoc drug combinations should be recommended to patients, and the patients should be advised not to take fatty meals that could interfere with the treatment; 4) Ramadan has no effect on the effectiveness of anti-helminthic therapy; and 5) patients with active ulcers should not fast, as they have a higher probability of developing complications

Psychometric data concerning the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule – Direction (PANAS-D) in athletes in Arabic-Tunisian language supporting a 2-factor structure of its short modified version

The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule – Direction (PANAS-D) questionnaire was translated from the French version developed by Nicolas and coworkers into Arabic-Tunisian language and administered to a sample of 519 athletes (mean age 19.43±3.78 years; 230 male, 229 female; 75 competing at international level, 287 at national level, 130 at regional level, and 27 at local level). A semi-confirmatory factor analysis was carried out in order to shed light on the factor structure of the questionnaire. Different models were tested, including the 1-factor, the 2-factor and the 3-factor structure models, and compared in terms of fitting indexes. Data support a 2-factor solution of the modified short version of the PANAS-D questionnaire

Infodemiological data of Ironman Triathlon in the study period 2004–2013

This article reports data concerning the Internet-related activities and interest for Ironman Triathlon competition. Google Trends (GT) was used and mined from 2004 onwards. The interest for Ironman Triathlon was found to be cyclic over time. The Triathlon-related Internet activities negatively correlated with the number of finishers per year (Pearson׳s correlation r=−0.690, p-value<0.05), while an increasing participation of female athletes who were less likely to surf the Internet could be noticed (r=−0.811, p-value<0.05). Further, younger athletes, who were more likely to access the web, were underrepresented in the Ironman Triathlon event. Moreover, there was a correlation between the biking time and the Internet query volumes (r=0.590, p-value<0.05), and, in particular, for the male athletes (r=0.664, p-value<0.05). Finally, the countries which most contributed to the Internet query volumes were those with the highest number of medals