Background: Despite the fact that menstruation is a normal physiological process, perimenstrual symptoms influence a significant proportion of women. There is little agreement among researchers on factors predicting perimenstrual symptoms. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the relationship between attitudes toward menstruation and perimenstrual symptoms among female students of Shahroud University of Medical Sciences, Northeast Iran. Methods: The current descriptive study was conducted on 300 female university students selected by the stratified random sampling method. The data were collected through an individual characteristics form (ICF), a menstruation attitude questionnaire (MAQ), and a menstrual distress questionnaire (MDQ). Data analysis was conducted using SPSS version 18. Descriptive statistics and Spearman correlation coefficient were used for data analysis. Results: 76.6% of the female students agreed menstruation is a debilitating event, 49.6% agreed menstruation is a bothersome event, and 92% of participants perceived menstruation as a natural event. 89.7% of them agreed the onset of menstruation could be predicted and only 35.3% of them believed that mensturation has no negative effect on woman's performance. Mood swings, cramps, and feeling sad or blue were the three most common symptoms during the premenstrual phase. Cramps, fatigue, and backache were the three most frequent symptoms during the menstrual phase. Fatigue, backache, and feeling sad or blue were the three most common symptoms during the reminder cycle phase. There were positive correlations between perimenstrual symptoms and all subscales of MAQ (except for the subscale "menstruation as a natural event"). Conclusions: According to the results of this study, menstrual attitudes in female university students are associated with their perimenstrual symptoms.

Objective: To evaluate the relationship between semen parameters and intrauterine insemination (IUI) success rates. Material and Methods: This retrospective study was conducted during a 4-year period (2011-2015) on the medical records of 350 couples admitted to the infertility center of Beast Hospital in Tehran. The participants’ data such as age, duration of infertility, semen parameters [including volume, concentration, motility, normal morphology and total motile sperm count (TMSC)] before and after sperm processing, as well as the IUI results were extracted from the patients’ records. Only the first IUI cycle of the couples was considered. The main outcome criterion for the IUI success was serum positive beta human chorionic gonadtotropin 14 days after IUI. The collected data were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test, chi-square, and Fisher’s exact tests. Results: The overall pregnancy rate for each couple was reported as 23.42% (82/350). There was no significant difference in the mean age of the couple and infertility duration between the groups who achieved pregnancy and those who failed. The two groups showed no significant differences in pre and post processing of semen parameters (including volume, concentration and TMSC). Sperm motility and normal sperm morphology before and after sperm processing were significantly different between the two groups, respectively (p=0.023 before sperm processing and p=0.032 after) (p=0.032 before sperm processing and p=0.007 after). Conclusion: Sperm motility and normal sperm morphology have an effect in IUI success.

Sperm motility and normal sperm morphology have effect in IUI success.

Objective:Climacteric syndrome, which is related to many symptoms, often causes discomfort in women. Non-pharmacologic treatment is one of the treatment options for affected individuals, and this syndrome can be cured with psychological treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The present study aimed to compare the efficacy of various CBT methods on the improvement of climacteric symptoms.Material and Methods:PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane, Medline, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar were searched for relevant articles published between January 1990 and August 2018. Data extraction and quality assessment were conducted by two authors.Results:A total of 15 articles including 910 women were entered. We divided the CBT methods into two categories, face-to-face (individual and group CBT) and indirect (self-help CBT) methods. Among the three CBT approaches, three articles covered individual CBT, nine articles carried out group CBT, and in five articles, the self-help approach was used. The climacteric symptoms that improved with CBT were categorized into three groups as vasomotor symptoms, psychological symptoms, and organic disorders. Generally, the face-to-face method played a key positive effect on symptom improvement, and the group CBT approach was more effective on psychological symptoms.Conclusion:Although the indirect method is more cost-effective, it has less impact than the face-to-face method; it is better to use face-to-face approaches to achieve better results, if possible. Further studies are required in this regard, particularly in the individual and self-help CBT approaches, to measure the impact of these approaches on more varied symptoms of menopause.