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This paper aims to assess the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency among female university students and employees at the Hashemite University (HU) and, then, to identify risk factors for developing vitamin D deficiency among this population. Vitamin D deficiency remains widespread in many countries, including Jordan, and has been linked to many diseases.

In this cross-sectional study, blood samples were taken from 320 healthy females – 160 students and 160 employees – aged between 18 and 65 years old who presented for routine checkup at the medical center of HU. Level of direct sun exposure and barriers to getting enough sunlight (dress style, skin color and sunscreen use) were questioned. Serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D were measured, and the daily intakes of vitamin D, calcium and phosphorous were estimated through completing an adopted food frequency questionnaire. All required data were collected using a face-to-face interview by trained dietitians. The software package ESHA was used to determine the daily intake from the nutrients.

The prevalence of vitamin D deficiency (25-OHD < 25 nmol/L) was 31.2 per cent in female students compared to 20.5 per cent in female employees. Prolonged exposure to sun was independently related to vitamin D deficiency (odds ratio = 4.55); participants exposed for 30 minutes daily were at a higher risk for vitamin D deficiency. However, estimated vitamin D intake was not affected by age and working status.

The present study has some important limitations. First, this study based on serum 25-OHD results, which alone, without biochemical parameters such as parathyroid hormone (either primary or secondary), might be linked to accelerated degradation of 25-OHD and shorter half-life. Second, the half-life of 25-OHD was not consistently available. Third, the smaller sample size of participants. Finally, the present study did not distinguish between intake of vitamin D2 and D3. This limitation caused the inability to precisely evaluate the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the studied population.

This study indicates that it is crucial to create awareness concerning the daily intake of vitamin D in the community to avoid long-term complications related to vitamin D deficiency, by using urgent measures including vitamin D supplementation and fortification of some highly consumed food, milk and other dairy products. Educational endeavors about sensible sun exposure should be implemented to improve vitamin D status among this population. The findings of the present study call for action at the national level to build strategies for health promotion about vitamin D supplementation in groups at risk for low supplementation (e.g. younger female students, with previous chronic diseases and poor sun exposure), and engage these populations in strategizing for successful and demographically relevant outreach and education in their own communities along with effort to prevent obesity and diabetes as well as raising awareness through simple programs to prevent and treat vitamin D deficiency among women living in Jordan.

The high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency among female university students in this study emphasizes the necessity of vitamin D supplementation and calls for action to build strategies for health promotion concerning vitamin D supplementation.

Dietary inflammatory potential (DIP) is a novel dietary index designed to evaluate individuals’ diets with considering inflammation and anti-inflammation score. In addition, adhesion molecules including soluble intracellular adhesion molecules-1 (sICAM-1), soluble cellular adhesion molecules-1 (sVCAM-1) and E-selectin are important biomarkers to assess endothelium dysfunction which are related to atherosclerosis and cardiovascular complications. Also, there is no study for assessing the association between adhesion molecules and DIP until now as well as other studies that assessed the relationship between dietary inflammatory index or DIP has controversy. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to determine the correlation between DIP and endothelial markers such as E-selectin, sICAM-1 and sVCAM-1 among female nurses from Isfahan. In this study, DIP was used instead of DII.

This study was performed on 420 healthy nurses. The nurses were selected by random cluster sampling method from private and public Isfahan hospitals. A validated food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) was applied to assess the DIP. A fasting blood sample was collected for measuring the plasma levels of the endothelial markers and other variables.

After adjusting different potential confounders, no statistical association was found between DIP and sICAM-1, E–selectin and sVCAM-1 in Model I (P = 0.57, 0.98 and 0.45), Model II (P = 0.57, 0.98 and 0.45) and Model III (P = 0.67, 0.92 and 0.50) in comparison to the crude group (P = 0.35, 0.83 and 0.49, respectively).

The results revealed that the plasma levels of endothelial markers including E-selectin, sICAM-1 and sVCAM-1 were not significantly associated with DIP in female nurses.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the functionalities, safety regulations and product applications of herb Stevia rebaudiana extract. This plant material is embedded with multiple functionalities such as antioxidant, antidiabetics, anti-inflammation and antimicrobial. The regulations released from global authorities are covered to ensure the safety premise of stevia. Besides, the product applications of the extract of aerial parts of the herb S. rebaudiana helps us to recognize its value from commercial side.

Relevant literatures are selected and obtained from main scientific databases such as Google Scholar, Web of Science, PubMed and trade magazines published between 2000 and 2023. The keywords and their possible combinations such as sweetening, antioxidant, antidiabetics, anti-inflammation, safety and product development were used to ensure the preciseness and completeness of literature searching. Major data such as sweetness, total phenolic content and dose together with latter critical conclusions from searched publications were appropriately used and discussed. In this review, approximately 150 scientific literatures were meticulously ordered and analyzed. In applications, it is the first time that sentiment analysis was used to obtain a market assessment of the stevia-containing products.

This review paper helps rearrange the scientific affairs of those stevia extract’s functions like sweetening, antioxidant, antidiabetics and inflammation. Sweetness indexes of steviol glycosides were summarized together for comparison while various in vitro and in vivo approaches were reviewed to quantify those functions’ capacities and to depict the related mechanism. The regulation of steviol glycoside compounds such as rebaudioside A was established by global authorities such as US Food and Drug Administration and Joint FAO/World Health Organization Expert Committee to ensure the safety endorsement before commercialization. Then, this study discussed about the market performance of stevia ingredients or products with the self-developed data analytics. This study also investigated the product development progress of stevia-containing food products in the categories of beverage, bakery, dairy and confectionery. Those stevia-containing food consumer goods can be acceptable by certain consumers.

This review paper precisely presents the evidential information about the stevia’s multiple functionalities with mechanisms and global regulation milestones. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is then the first time to probe the stevia-containing products’ market performance through data analytics.

This paper examines a premarital genetics program focusing on congenital deafness, conducted in Israel with a Bedouin minority group characterized by consanguinity, a religious ban on abortion, and high prevalence of genetic diseases. Building on interviews with counselors and counselees as well as observations of the interactions between them, the analysis describes the professional, communal, public and private arenas of negotiation that surround the process of genetic counseling.

The deficiency or excess of serum zinc in pregnancy may threaten the health of the mother and the fetus. The purpose of this study is to determine the pattern of serum zinc in pregnant women covered by Urmia urban health centers and its association with some nutritional and clinical determinants in the third trimester, from July to December 2018.

In this analytic cross-sectional study, of six selected health centers in Urmia, 400 pregnant women subjects who were in their third trimester were recruited in a simple random manner. The nutritional, demographic, clinical data as well as fasting blood samples were taken from each of the subjects. The data were analyzed using chi-square, independent t-test and logistic regression tests.

The study revealed that about 3 per cent of pregnant women had zinc deficiency, 70.2 per cent were normal and 26.8 per cent had high serum zinc levels. In 388 pregnant women (72.4 per cent with normal serum zinc and 27.6 per cent with high serum zinc), binary logistic regression model showed that high concentration of serum zinc was directly associated with dietary intake zinc (OR: 2.252; 95 per cent CI: 1.85-2.74), supplement zinc (OR: 7.823; 95 per cent CI: 3.676-16.649) and total intake magnesium (OR: 1.005; 95 per cent CI: 1.000-1.01) and inversely associated with frequent reproductive cycling (OR: 0.739; 95 per cent CI: 0.569-0.959).

Pregnant women in Urmia probably have high concentrations of serum zinc, and it is likely related to consumption of the zinc supplementation. Supplementation programs need to be scaled up for pregnant women that take inadequate dietary zinc.

For years, traditional techniques have been used for diabetes treatment. There are two major types of insulin: insulin analogs and regular insulin. Insulin analogs are similar to regular insulin and lead to changes in pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties. The purpose of the present research was to determine the cost-effectiveness of insulin analogs versus regular insulin for diabetes control in Yazd Diabetes Center in 2017.

In this descriptive–analytical research, the cost-effectiveness index was used to compare insulin analogs and regular insulin (pen/vial) for treatment of diabetes. Data were analyzed in the TreeAge Software and a decision tree was constructed. A 10% discount rate was used for ICER sensitivity analysis. Cost-effectiveness was examined from a provider's perspective.

QALY was calculated to be 0.2 for diabetic patients using insulin analogs and 0.05 for those using regular insulin. The average cost was $3.228 for analog users and $1.826 for regular insulin users. An ICER of $0.093506/QALY was obtained. The present findings suggest that insulin analogs are more cost-effective than regular insulin.

This study was conducted using a cost-effectiveness analysis to evaluate insulin analogs versus regular insulin in controlling diabetes. The results of study are helpful to the government to allocate more resources to apply the cost-effective method of the treatment and to protect patients with diabetes from the high cost of treatment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if facets of workaholism are associated with a family history of metabolic diseases.

Data on workaholism and family history of health issues were collected, through administration of an online survey, from 194 employees.

Workaholism significantly related to a family history of metabolic diseases.

Future researchers should collect objective disease data, examine work-related moderators as well as potential mediators, and implement longitudinal designs with much larger samples. That said, the data reveal a correlation between workaholism and family history of metabolic disease.

The results provide valuable information to help promote a healthy workforce and to improve employees’ health by reducing workaholic tendencies. They could also help to minimize health-related costs associated with metabolic diseases that could develop in parallel with workaholism, as well as costs in terms of a loss in productivity due absenteeism.

It is, the authors believe, the first study to investigate the relationship between facets of workaholism and family history of health issues that have often been associated with metabolic diseases.