Methods: In this exploratory qualitative study, two focus group discussion (15 teachers) and 30 individual in-depth interviews were conducted among female adolescents in the eighth grade in Zahedan, Iran. Qualitative content analysis was used for data evaluation.
Results: The views of students and teachers demonstrated nine of needs including: informing students about the schools' health project aims, education and training all dimensions of health with an emphasis on mental health, use of experts in various fields for education from other organisations, employing capable and trusted counselors in schools, utilisation of a variety of teaching methods, activating reward systems for encouraging students' participation in group activities, teaching communication and the ability to establish good relationships with parents and strategies for resolving family conflict, teaching parents and students high-risk behaviours and strategies for handling them as well as reforming wrong attitudes and indigenous sub-culture.
Conclusion: This study found the different needs of Iranian female students compared to other cultures about a health promoting school programme. Therefore, their contribution can provide an insight for formulating policies and intervention in schools.
METHODS: Initially, to develop constructs related to social media activities, web-based structured interviews were conducted with five office employees working in the oil and gas industry for the last 5 years. Then, using an online questionnaire survey, data was collected from 424 office employees working in the oil and gas industry in Malaysia. Using statistical software for social science (SPSS) and Smart PLS, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted to identify reliability and validity (discriminant validity, convergent validity and composite validity) of the constructs. Following this, path analysis was conducted and the moderating effects were identified.
RESULTS: Social media activities related to work-life decrease health and wellbeing by 11% and weaken the negative effect of effort-reward-imbalance on health and wellbeing by 17.6% at a 1% level of significance. The results of social media activities related to personal and social life strengthen the negative effect of effort-reward imbalance on health and wellbeing by 12% and negatively affects health and wellbeing and job rewards by 13, 55%, respectively. The direct effect of effort-reward imbalance and job efforts is significantly negative on health and wellbeing by 59 and 10%, respectively.
CONCLUSION: It is concluded that social media activities of the office employees significantly moderate the effect of effort-reward imbalance on health and wellbeing and intervene in job rewards in the organizations. Hence, the effect of social media activities reduces the health and wellbeing of office employees.
Objectives: This study aimed to determine the specific brain region that is responsive to KOPr treatment following polydrug dependence.
Materials and Methods: The polydrug-dependent mice model was developed using conditioned place preference (CPP) method. Following successful withdrawal phase, the mice were treated with 0.3 mg/kg buprenorphine and 1.0 mg/kg naltrexone. Four brain regions (hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and striatum) were investigated using immunohistochemistry technique. This is to quantify the changes in KOPr expression in each major brain region that was primarily involved in addiction neurocircuits of many substances. Unpaired Student's t test was used to analyze all results, where P < 0.05 is considered significant.
Results: The results showed that treatment with buprenorphine and naltrexone successfully attenuated relapse in 60% of mice (n = 14). A significant upregulation of KOPr was detected in striatum at the end of post-withdrawal phase (P < 0.01, n = 12). This treatment successfully suppressed KOPr in striatum (P < 0.001, n = 12), which supports the positive results seen in the CPP setting. No significant changes were observed in other brain regions studied.
Conclusion: The hyperactivity of striatum suggests that the affected brain region following KOPr antagonist treatment is the region that primarily controls the drug rewarding activity, in which nucleus accumbens is located. This indicates that manipulation of KOPr system is one of the potential targets to treat morphine- or methamphetamine-dependence problem.
AIMS: In this study, we investigated the effects of mitragynine on dopamine (DA) level and dopamine transporter (DAT) expression from the rat's frontal cortex.
METHODS: DA level was recorded in the brain samples of animals treated with acute or repeated exposure for 4 consecutive days with either vehicle or mitragynine (1 and 30 mg/kg) using electrochemical sensor. Animals were then decapitated and the brain regions were removed, snap-frozen in liquid nitrogen and immediately stored at -80 °C. DA level was quantified using Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits and DAT gene expression was determined using quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR).
RESULTS/OUTCOME: Mitragynine (1 and 30 mg/kg) did not increase DA release following acute treatment, however, after repeated exposure at day 4, mitragynine significantly and dose dependently increased DA release in the frontal cortex. In this study, we also observed a significant increase in DAT mRNA expression at day 4 in group treated with mitragynine (30 mg/kg).
CONCLUSION/INTERPRETATION: Data from this study indicates that mitragynine significantly increased DA release when administered repeatedly, increased in DAT mRNA expression with the highest tested dose (30 mg/kg). Therefore, the rewarding effects observed after mitragynine administration could be due to its ability to increase DA content in certain areas of the brain especially the frontal cortex.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from May to June 2017 in the private medical college in Malaysia.
Materials and Methods: We purposively selected the final year (semester 10) medical students and a total of 124 students participated in this study. We collected data using a self-administered, structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent t-test, and one-way analysis of variance.
Results: Among the final year medical students, 47.5% had moderate knowledge but 4.2% had good knowledge of mandatory infectious disease notification. Only 3.2% of the students correctly answered all the notifiable diseases listed in the questionnaire. Most of the students had positive attitude toward communicable diseases reporting, rewards, and penalty for notification. There was no significant relationship between sociodemographic characteristics and knowledge and attitude of infectious disease notification.
Conclusions: The majority of the final year medical students had moderate level of knowledge and positive attitude of infectious disease notification; however, there were some deficiencies. Better instruction and training on infectious disease notification procedures of Malaysia should be provided to the final year medical students which could not only reduce underreporting but also improve timely and effective reporting in future.