Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: Iron deficiency in the body is the main cause of anemia, and iron supplementation is probably the best option for iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia in women and young children. This study aimed to explain the challenges of national iron supplementation in female school’s base on the perspective of the stakeholders.
Methods: This study was a qualitative study of content analysis. The data of this study were conducted by focus group discussion, semi-deep interviews with the participation of the target community of students, parents of students, school principals and school health instructors, general manager of the Office of Community Nutrition (Department of Education) includes manager, deputy and school health officer, from October 2016 to January 2017 in city of Gonabad, Iran. Participants were selected through targeted sampling and data collection continued to saturation. Data were analyzed using contractual content analysis method based on five steps of Graneheim and Lundman. Data management was done with NVivo software, version 11 (QSR International, Victoria, Australia), but data analysis and interpretation were done manually.
Results: The findings from group discussions and semi-deep interviews with stakeholders were categorized into twelve themes. The main strength, perceived in "Perceived Individual Benefits" and "Perceived Executive or Management Benefits". The main perceived weakness was "Physical Disadvantages", "Tablets Disadvantages", "Disadvantages of Programming" and "Disadvantages of the Program". The main perceived barriers was "Educational and Information Barriers", "Barriers of Pill Consumption" and "Management and Administrative Barriers". "Modifying the Executive Program", "Individual Perception Modification" and "Reform the Shape of Pills" were suggested as a corrective mechanism from participants’ view point.
Conclusion: According to the results of this study, the most important challenges of the "Schools Iron Aid National Plan" were "Educational and Information Barriers", "Administrative barriers", and "Barriers to Pill Consumption". Therefore, in order to do better, the Iron Supplementation Program requires intervention at individual, interpersonal, inter-organizational, and intra-organizational levels to provide comprehensive support for the program and, ultimately, increase program productivity.

Background: Anemia has a very high prevalence across the world. Microcytic anemia is the most common nutritional disorder and a major health problem in infants and children associated with inadequate growth and development. Diagnosing anemia at the birth can be difficult. Due to the fact that conditions such as thalassemia and iron deficiency are causative factors of microcytic anemia are prevalent in Iran, early diagnosing and treating these diseases can prevent excessive costs and further complications. Therefore, recognizing the practical factors with this complication is an effective step in controlling and preventing it. Therefore, the present study was performed to determine the prevalence of microcytic anemia in newborns in Baharloo Hospital in Tehran, Iran.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 210 infants, which were newly born on Baharloo Hospital from march2018 to march2019. 2.5 cc cord blood sample was extracted from each infant, and microcytic anemia were diagnosed according to factors such as Hb, MCV and others parameters.
Results: in this study, we demonstrated that there is a significant association between MCH and microcytic anemia. Our results showed that the rates of newborn infants with anemia disease (Hb<13ml/dl) were 14.3% and the rates of microcytic anemia were 9.5%. There were not any significant differences between mother's age, neonatal weight and height, type of parturition, pregnancy age and parental ratio with the incidence of microcytic anemia.

Background: Febrile seizures (FS) are the most common cause of seizure in children. In order to prevent FS and their recurrence, the recognition of the related factors to recurrence of FS is important. According to the high prevalence of FS and iron deficiency anemia (IDA) in children and that IDA is a possible risk factor for FS, as well as controversies in previous studies in this field, in this study, the relationship between iron deficiency anemia and FS in children was investigated.
Methods: This is a case-control study that investigates the relationship between febrile seizures with anemia in 150 patients aged six months to five years with fever who were admitted to Imam Sajjad Yasouj Hospital, from April to August of 2014. In this study, 75 patients with febrile seizures (case group) and 75 febrile patients without seizures (control group) were compared. Cause of fever (urinary infection, gastrointestinal infections, upper respiratory infection, lower respiratory infection and other causes), Information about blood cell count (white blood cell (WBC) and red blood cell (RBC), hemoglobin (HB), mean red blood cell volume (MCV) and serum ferritin level in patients with hemoglobin below 11 were recorded.

Results: The mean age of the study population was 21.4 14 months. 34.7% of the study population were girls and 65.3% were boys. In this study, 10.7% of the cases and 8% of the controls had IDA. Although the prevalence of IDA was higher in the FS group, this difference was not significant (P=0.58). Also, HB and MCV were not significantly different in the two groups (P=0.49, P=0.69). In addition, the mean serum ferritin level in the FS group with anemia and the FS group with anemia did not show a statistically significant difference (P=0.94). Conclusion: According to the result of this study, IDA is not a risk factor for seizures in febrile children.