All of the studied variables, that is, gender, age, education level, are critical risk factors of adopting different suicide methods in an Iranian population. Future work is necessary to explore the psychopathology adopting different suicide methods in the Iranian population.

Purpose Motorcycle accident is a major cause of road traffic injuries and the motorcyclists are considered as vulnerable road users. The present study aimed to determine the epidemiological characteristics of fatal motorcycle crashes in Iran. Methods In this cross-sectional study, a total of 28,356 motorcycle traffic fatalities registered in the Legal Medicine Organization of Iran were analyzed during the period between March 2011 and March 2017. The examined variables included demographic characteristics, helmet use, crash mechanisms, crash location, position state, type of counterpart vehicle, cause of death and place of death. In the study, road traffic mortalities involving drivers and/or passenger of motorcycles were included. Cases or events registered without these conditions were excluded from the study. To analyse the data, SPSS statistics 25 and GraphPad Prism 8 softwares were used. Results Of the 122,682 fatal traffic injury cases, 28,356 (23.1%) were motorcycle users, of whom 95.3% were male and 4.7% were female. Most of the motorcycle fatalities belonged to the age group of 18–24 years (29.1%). Head trauma was the major cause of death (59.0%). Also, the overall proportion of safety helmet use among motorcycle crash victims was estimated at 37.4%. Most of the road traffic crash cases (46.8%) happened out of city and half of people (49.9%) died in hospital. About 77.4% of the victims were motorcycle riders and 21.1% were pillion passengers. The highest rate of mortality belonged to the self-employed (38.4%) and then workers (21.8%) and students (10.2%). In addition, most fatalities occurred in people with low education (77.5%) and the least occurred in university graduates (5.5%). Among 31 provinces of Iran, Fars had the highest (9.3%) occurrence rate and Kohgiluyeh and Buyer-Ahmad had the lowest (0.5%). Most of the crash mechanisms were due to motorcycle-vehicle crashes (80.2%), followed by rollover (9.8%). Conclusion Comprehensive public education and special rules are needed to reduce the rate of deaths in motorcycle crashes.

Parkinson disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, whose prevalence is 2~3% in the population over 65. α-Synuclein aggregation is the major pathological hallmark of PD. However, recent studies have demonstrated enhancing evidence of tau pathology in PD. Despite extensive considerations, thus far, the actual spreading mechanism of neurodegeneration has remained elusive in a PD brain. This study aimed to further investigate the development of α-synuclein and tau pathology. We employed various PD models, including cultured neurons treated with either 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) or with recombinant α-synuclein. Also, we studied dopaminergic neurons of cytokine Interferon-β knock-out. Moreover, we examined rats treated with 6-hydroxydopamine, Rhesus monkeys administrated with MPTP neurotoxin, and finally, human post-mortem brains. We found the α-synuclein phosphorylation triggers tau pathogenicity. Also, we observed more widespread phosphorylated tau than α-synuclein with prion-like nature in various brain areas. We optionally removed P-tau or P-α-synuclein from cytokine interferon-β knock out with respective monoclonal antibodies. We found that tau immunotherapy suppressed neurodegeneration more than α-synuclein elimination. Our findings indicate that the pathogenic tau could be one of the leading causes of comprehensive neurodegeneration triggered by PD. Thus, we can propose an efficient therapeutic target to fight the devastating disorder.

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Objectives: Unsafe abortion is one of the most important causes of death and disability among mothers in countries where abortion is illegal. These conditions have changed since then. The present study has investigated the cases who were referred to the legal medicine organization to receive abortion permission. This country level secondary patient data analysis, investigated all the cases who were referred to the legal medicine centers of Iran for abortion permission during 2015 to 2017. Results: From 21,477 applicants, 15,617 (72.71%) received permission including 14,367 (91.99%) for fetal abnormalities and 1250 (8.01%) for maternal diseases. The most common fetal abnormalities/disorders were nervous system malformations (26.4%), chromosomal abnormalities (18.4%) and of maternal diseases were circulatory system diseases (43.9%), neoplasms (13.4%) and genitourinary system diseases (9.9%). The most common reasons for not permission were lack of supplementary documents to prove (38.8%), not competency with the criteria (33.9%), and gestational age of more than 19 weeks (25.8%).

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Background: There are five different kinds of death; natural death due to any disease, accidental death, suicidal death, homicidal death, and undetermined death. Objectives: This study aimed to determine the major causes of death based on the autopsied reports to aid the development of preventive strategies. Methods: This study was a retrospective cross-sectional study consisting of autopsy reports of all suicidal, homicidal and occupational deaths recorded in all forensic medicine dissection halls in thirty-two provinces of Iran from March 2011 to March 2015. A questionnaire was designed containing all the information required for our studies such as gender, age, cause of death, and the autopsy reports. Results: There were 19288 suicides, 11655 homicides, and 8558 occupational deaths during five years. Among suicidal deaths, there were seventy percent male and thirty percent female. Most victims (about 22%) were between 18 to 24 years old (Mean age ± SD: 33.1 ± 13.1 years). The highest cases of suicide were 52% hanging, and 25% poisoning, respectively. Among homicidal victims, there were 18% males and 20% females. Most victims were between 25 to 29 years old (24%) (Mean age ± SD: 32.4 ± 15.6 years). The most common methods were 46% firearms, and 29% stab wounds, respectively. Among occupational deaths happened in 99% of males and 1% of females. The most common victims' age-group was 30-39 years old (25%) (Mean age ± SD: 35.8 ± 10.3 years). Seventy-four percent of cases were caused by blunt trauma as a result of falling from a height. The second common cause of death was Electrocution (21% of the cases). Conclusions: The analysis of the causes of suicidal, homicidal, occupational deaths, can aid the development of preventive strategies to decrease the occurrence of these kinds of preventable deaths in Iran.