An Overview of a National Surveillance Program in Iran for Prevention of Chronic Non-communicable Diseases from Childhood: CASPIAN Study

"nBackground: The health status of children in the Iran has improved in many areas such as lower rates of infectious diseases and declines in malnutrition. However rapid lifestyle changes might make them prone to chronic diseases in adulthood. Be­cause of the importance of collecting national information about related risk behaviors and risk factors, this national project was conducted for the first time in the Eastern Mediterranean region."nMethods:  The baseline survey was conducted among 21111 school students aged 6-18 years, and their parents living in 23 provinces; biochemical tests were obtained from 4811 students."nResults: Underweight and overweight had similar prevalence (13.9% underweight, 13.4% overweight).The most prevalent type of dyslipidemia was low HDL-C and hypertriglyceridemia. In addition to providing national percentiles and reference curves for weight, height and body mass index, this study provided the first reference curves for waist circumference and blood pressure of children, as well as the first national prevalence of pediatric metabolic syndrome in Asia. Unhealthy nutri­tion and low physical activity were associated with most risk factors."nConclusion: Close monitoring of children and adolescents for risk factors and risk behaviors should be considered as a public health priority, thus a national school-based surveillance program is being established in this regard in Iran. &nbsp

Nationwide Report on the Findings of Integrated School Health Screening Program in Iran

Background: Screening of students´ health problems could lead to timely prevention and control of many health disorders. This study aimed to determine the nationwide prevalence of common disorders through school health screening program in Iran Methods: This cross-sectional national screening program was conducted in 2007-2008 among first- and third-grade- students in primary schools, first- grade-students of middle and high schools of all provinces in Iran.Results: Data were obtained from 3,124,021 (81.9%) students reported from the whole country classified into 33 geographical zones. Of total students studied, 12.48% had weight abnormalities, 4.77% had visual disorders, 3.95 % had head lice, 2.24% had behavioral disorders, and 0.6% had hearing disorders. Among students studied, 0.4%, 0.7%, 0.4% and0.8% had endocrine, psychological, neurological and genitourinary disorders, respectively. In addition, 2.1%, 1.9%, 1.8%, 0.8%0.5%, 0.3% and 0.3% of students had ear, nose & pharynx disorder, anemia ,skin & hair , cardiac ,abdominal, vertebral and lung problems, respectively. In elementary schools;57.6% of first-grade- students with at least one disorder were managed in outpatient settings and 6% of them were hospitalized for more investigation. Among third- grade- students of elementary schools, these values corresponded to 13.2% and 1.1%, respectively. Among first grade students of middle and high schools, this prevalence was 58.5% and 44.6% and 1.2% and 0.3% of students were hospitalized for more investigation.Conclusion: This integrated school screening program revealed a considerably high prevalence of health disorders among school students. These results might help health policy makers to design future health promoting programs

Relation of intelligence quotient and body mass index in preschool children: a community-based cross-sectional study

OBJECTIVE: Overweight and obesity in children is a global problem. Besides physical effects, obesity has harmful psychological effects on children. METHODS: We carried out cross-sectional community-based study to investigate the relation between body mass index (BMI) and cognitive functioning in preschool children. Thirteen socioeconomical elements of 1151 children were measured and analyzed based on their intelligence quotient (IQ) test results. Thirteen out of 33 provinces were selected randomly, and schools were selected as clusters in rural and urban areas. Descriptive statistics, t-test, analysis of variance and regression were used when appropriate. RESULTS: Our analysis showed that IQ was associated with household income, place of residence, delivery type, type of infant feeding and father's and mother's education level (P<0.001 for all). Using penalized linear regression for eliminating the impact of confounding factor, our study shows that, living in metropolitan (β=2.411) and urban areas (β=2.761), the level of participants' father's education (β=5.251) was positively and BMI (β=−0.594) was negatively related with IQ test results. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of the present study showed that a lower IQ score is associated with higher BMI. However, this relation appears to be largely mediated when the socioeconomic status was considered