Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: Researchers and health specialists are increasingly obtaining information on chronic illnesses from self-reports. This study validates self-reports of hypertension, based on a recently fielded survey in Mashhad City, Iran.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we used the results of 2015 census in Mashhad City, a population based survey of people over the age of 30 (n=300745) to determine the proportion of self-reported hypertension. In this study, the data of the studied population was extracted from the databank of Sina Electronic Health Record System (SinaEHR®) and patients with ICD10 codes including I10 and I11 approved by doctors as a reference. Finally using SPSS software, version 20 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) and MedCalc (https://www.medcalc.org/calc/odds_ratio.php), sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value were calculated with 95% confidence interval.
Results: Sensitivity of self-reported hypertension was 23.92% (CI95%: 23.43-24.41), specificity 97.03% (CI95%: 96.97-97.09), Positive Linkelihood Ratio 8.06% (CI95%: 7.82-8.30), Negative Linkelihood Ratio 0.78% (CI95%: 0.78-0.79), Positive Predictive Value 46.34% (CI95%: 45.60-47.08), Negative Predictive Value 92.25% (CI95%: 92.20-92.29). The self-reported sensitivity to hypertension in males, Iranian individuals, single, aged 60 and over, body mass index lower 18.5 individual with university education was higher, which was 24.67%, 31.09%, 30.07%, 32.43% and 26.03% respectively.
Conclusion: Although the sensitivity of self-reported hypertension was poor in this study, but specificity and positive and negative predictive values were fairly good.

Background: Alkaptonuria is a rare disorder that leads to excessive production and accumulation of homogentisic acid in body tissues, and this increase causes tissue degeneration and organ dysfunction through a process called achromasia. Due to very few studies in the field of this disease and access to epidemiological data for the first time in Iran, the present study was conducted with the aim of epidemiological investigation of the mortality rate of patients with alkaptonuria during the years 2013 to 2022 in Iran.
Methods: The design of the present study was cross-sectional (descriptive-analytical). The data related to the deceased registered according to the international coding system of diseases (ICD-10) were extracted from the system of registration and classification of the causes of death of Iran for death due to alkaptonuria disease. The variables investigated in this study included: age, gender and residence status of the deceased. Chi-square and Fisher's exact test were also used to analyze the data.

Results: The specific death rate was calculated as 0.31 per one million people of the population. In this study, 90% of the deaths occurred at the age of less than five years. The age variable included two groups of less than five years and more than five years, where 90% of deaths occurred at the age of less than five years. 60% of the deceased were men and 40% were women. Regarding the residence status variable, 82% of the cases were urban and the rest were rural. Finally, there was no significant difference between the incidence of death due to alkaptonuria disease and the investigated variables, which are age (P=0.291), gender (P=0.958) and residence status (P=0.273). Conclusion: According to the findings in the present study, although no significant difference was observed between age and the number of cases of death due to alkaptonuria; But most cases of death have occurred in young age groups, which seems that more studies are needed to understand the different dimensions of this disease