Anxiety Levels of Children with Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia and Their Mothers at the Beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Change in the First Year

We aimed to assess anxiety of children with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) and their primary caregivers at the beginning of Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and change in levels of anxiety in first year with prolongation of pandemic. This was a two-step study; first step was questionnaire-based, conducted via teleconference. In first step, 29 patients and 105 healthy children and their mothers were participated; 25 children with PCD and their mothers were in second step. Demographic characteristics, clinical informations were recorded. Children’s and mothers’ state and trait anxiety levels were assessed and compared. Anxiety levels of mothers of patients were assessed according to clinical characteristics of children. Mothers’ knowledge of COVID-19 and effect of teleconference on their anxiety was evaluated. State anxiety levels in the first year of pandemic of children with PCD and their mothers were also compared. Compared to control group, state anxiety of children in 13-18 age group and trait anxiety of their mothers were lower (p<0.05). In both groups, trait and state anxiety of 13-18 years old children and mothers positively correlated. Trait anxiety of mothers of patients negatively correlated with patients’ FEV1 and MEF25-75. Patients’ mothers reported feeling less anxiety at the end of teleconference. Anxiety of mothers of patients (especially under 9 years old) had increased as pandemic continued. At the beginning of pandemic, children with PCD were less anxious than healthy children, and their mothers had lower trait anxiety than mothers of healthy children. Being followed for chronic disease and obtaining information about COVID-19 may have reduced anxiety of children with PCD and their mothers. However, as pandemic continues, need to protect their children with PCD from infection, especially of mothers with younger children, may have raised their concerns

Alcohol consumption and alcohol policy

Alcohol is a unique addictive substance used by many people for different reasons. Alcohol use affects not only the users but also the family and the whole society in a negative way. Alcohol is one of the most commonly used substances for entertainment purposes in the world and 1 in 3 people is a current drinker. 2348 billion people (43\% of the population) aged 15 and over are current drinkers and males drink about 2 times more frequently than females (53.6\%/32.3\%). According to the Global Alcohol and Health Report published by the World Health Organization (WHO) (2018), total alcohol per capita consumption (APC) worldwide aged 15 and over increased from 5.7 liters in 2000 to 6.4 liters in 2016. Harmful alcohol consumption is a major public health problem and it is known to be associated with more than 200 diseases and injuries. Policies and measures to prevent alcohol use are not implemented adequately and the burden of alcohol-related illnesses continues to increase tremendously. In order to prevent and reduce the harmful effects of alcohol, alcohol policies should be formulated based on the best evidence from a public health perspective

Is there still a necessity for awareness and information about HPV infection and vaccine for adolescent in developing countries?

Increasing awareness of human papilloma virus (HPV) and vaccines among the target population is an important factor for decreasing the rate of malignancies related to HPV. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to determine Turkish high school and college students’ knowledge level of HPV and vaccines via a survey. The HPV knowledge scale (HPV-KS) has been developed to measure the level of knowledge about HPV and vaccination. The response rate of ‘Yes’ to the question of whether the participants have heard of HPV and the vaccine was 60.8% and 58.8%, respectively. The lack of information was the commonest reason for not being vaccinated in 54% of the participants. According to the HPV-KS, the median value of the knowledge level of the participants was 35.7 (IQR; 14.3–57.1). The HPV-KS scores were significantly higher among those with parents who had graduated from university and had an income above the minimum wage than those who did not (p = .013 and p = .029, respectively). Current evidence suggests that Turkish adolescents have limited HPV knowledge. Gender, age, education (particularly university and health-related departments), parents’ level of education and income were all important factors in determining the outcome variables. Therefore, it is very important to apply educational programs to raise awareness by medical staff.Impact Statement What is already known on this subject? Human papilloma virus (HPV) infection is a major threat due to the reason of many malignancies, especially cervical cancer, and this problem can be overcome by informing the target population about the screening program and vaccination. What do the results of this study add? Lack of knowledge about HPV infection and cost of the vaccine were the main reasons for insufficient vaccination rate among the adolescents. What are the implications of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research? In developing countries such as Turkey, the necessity to raise awareness about HPV infection and vaccination has emerged. As a result, it is critical to implement educational campaigns to enhance awareness, particularly by medical staff

Ontology-based automatic identification of public health-related Turkish tweets

Kucuk, Dilek/0000-0003-2656-1300;WOS: 000399862200001PubMed: 28187367Social media analysis, such as the analysis of tweets, is a promising research topic for tracking public health concerns including epidemics. In this paper, we present an ontology-based approach to automatically identify public health-related Turkish tweets. The system is based on a public health ontology that we have constructed through a semi-automated procedure. The ontology concepts are expanded through a linguistically motivated relaxation scheme as the last stage of ontology development, before being integrated into our system to increase its coverage. The ultimate lexical resource which includes the terms corresponding to the ontology concepts is used to filter the Twitter stream so that a plausible tweet subset, including mostly public-health related tweets, can be obtained. Experiments are carried out on two million genuine tweets and promising precision rates are obtained. Also implemented within the course of the current study is a Web-based interface, to track the results of this identification system, to be used by the related public health staff. Hence, the current social media analysis study has both technical and practical contributions to the significant domain of public health

Monitoring Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus RNA shedding in body secretions and serological status in hospitalised patients, Turkey, 2015

Introduction: Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is a tick-borne disease in Africa, Asia, the Balkan peninsula, the south-east of Europe and the Middle East, with mortality rates of 3-30\%. Transmission can also occur through contact with infected animals or humans. Aim: This observational, prospective case series aimed to investigate detectable viral genomic RNA in whole-body fluids and antibody dynamics in consecutive daily samples of patients diagnosed with CCHF until discharge from hospital. Methods: We tested 18 patients and 824 swabs and sera with RT-PCR and 125 serum samples serologically. Results: The longest duration until clearance of viral RNA was 18 days from serum collection and 18, 15, 13, 19 and 17 days, respectively, from nasal, oral, genital (urethral or vaginal) and faecal swab, and urine. In seven patients, viral load decreased in serum at the same time as it increased in urine or persisted at the same logarithmic values. Despite clearance in serum, viral RNA was detected in faeces and genital swabs in two and three patients, respectively. Viral clearance from body fluids occurred earlier than from serum in eight patients on ribavirin treatment. The shortest seroconversion time was 3 days after symptom onset for IgM and IgG. Seroconversion of IgG occurred until Day 14 of symptoms. Conclusion: We report persistence of viral RNA in urine, faeces and genital swabs despite serum clearance. This may indicate a need for extending isolation precautions, re-evaluating discharge criteria and transmission risk after discharge, and considering oral swabs as a less invasive diagnostic alternative