PCS with its large scale and wealth of socio-economic and medical data can be a unique platform for studying the etiology of non-communicable diseases and effective interventions in Iran.

No abstract

Objectives: Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders, known as TMDs, are significant public health problems and may result in pain and disability. In order to determine the prevalence of clinical/subjective TMD in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), we used the research diagnostic criteria (RDC)/TMD axes. We assessed the anti-cyclic citrullinated protein (anti-CCP)-related TMD in RA for the first time.     Materials and Methods: Fifty-two RA patients were compared to 47 healthy controls with regard to complete blood count (CBC), serology, acute phase reactants (APR), and TMJ dysfunction.  Results: The anti-CCP antibody showed a significant correlation with the development of clinical TMD (P=0.001, 95% confidence interval (CI)=12.4%-35.6%). A prevalence of 50% was calculated through the RDC/TMD for such disorders. In RA patients, statistically significant differences were observed between the groups with and without clinical TMD regarding psychological depression and physical symptoms. Conclusions: According to the results, a significant correlation was found between the anti-CCP antibody and TMD. Therefore, when this antibody is detected in the blood serum, the treatment must be initiated. The RDC/TMD used in this study assessed the prevalence of TMJ dysfunction in conformity with RA-associated TMJ findings previously obtained through other conventional methods

No abstract

This corrects the article "Effectiveness of polypill for prevention of cardiovascular disease (PolyPars): protocol of a randomized controlled trial" published on 2020: Volume 23, Issue 08, Pages 548–556. Correction to: Arch Iran Med. 2020;23(8):548–556. doi: 10.34172/aim.2020.58. In the original version of this article, the recruitment period was wrongly reported to last from December 2014 to December 2015 in abstract and methods sections of the article. This is corrected into "from December 2015 to December 2016" in the PDF and HTML versions of the article. Also the "PolyIran" is changed to "PolyPars" in the last paragraph of the discussion section in the PDF and HTML versions of the article.

Background: Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death in Iran. A fixed-dose combination therapy (polypill) was proposed as a cost-effective strategy for CVD prevention, especially in lower-resource settings. We conducted the PolyPars trial to assess the effectiveness and safety of polypill for prevention of CVD. Methods: The PolyPars trial is a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial nested within the Pars Cohort Study. Participants were randomized to an intervention arm and a control arm. Participants in the control arm received minimal non-pharmacological care, while those in the intervention arm received polypill in addition to minimal care. The polypill comprises hydrochlorothiazide 12.5 mg, aspirin 81 mg, atorvastatin 20 mg, and either enalapril 5 mg or valsartan 40 mg. The primary outcome of the study is defined as the first occurrence of acute coronary syndrome (non-fatal myocardial infarction and unstable angina), fatal myocardial infarction, sudden cardiac death, new-onset heart failure, coronary artery revascularization procedures, transient ischemic attack, cerebrovascular accidents (fatal or non-fatal), and hospitalization due to any of the mentioned conditions. The secondary outcomes of the study include adverse events, compliance, non-cardiovascular mortality, changes in blood pressure, fasting blood sugar, and lipids after five years of follow-up. Results: From December 2014 to December 2015, 4415 participants (91 clusters) were recruited. Of those, 2200 were in the polypill arm and 2215 in the minimal care arm. The study is ongoing. This trial was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov number NCT03459560. Conclusion: Polypill may be effective for primary prevention of CVDs in developing countries.

Context The issue of pharmacotherapy safety in treating musculoskeletal pain, has brought attention to topical application, a safe and still effective route of drug delivery. Evidence Acquisition This review focuses on the topical agents used in temporomandibular disorders (TMDs). An advanced search of publications starting from 1980 through 2016 was made in ScienceDirect, PubMed, Medline, and Google Scholar databases using different combinations of keywords ("topical medication" OR "topical therapeutic" OR "topical pharmacotherapeutic agent" OR "topical analgesic") AND ("temporomandibular joint" OR "temporomandibular disorder" OR "temporomandibular joint dysfunction" OR "temporomandibular joint pain"). The relevance of searched articles to topical pharmacotherapy of temporomandibular joint disorders was considered and the following eligibility criteria were implied: 1) original articles; 2) English-language articles; and 3) full-text articles. TMDs are recently classified as muscle disorders, disc displacements, arthralgia, osteoarthritis and osteoarthrosis (1). TMDs are the most common musculoskeletal condition after chronic low back pain (2). The TMJ pain may be resulted from sensitization of trigeminal sensory neurons innervating the TMJ region (3). A patient with TMD may also have a pain complaint in the neck, shoulder or upper neck region (4). As for other musculoskeletal disorders, pharmacotherapy may be