BackgroundSexually transmitted Infections (STIs) rank among the most important health issues for the people especially the young adults worldwide. Young people tend to engage in sexual activity at younger ages in the past decade than in the 1970s, and 1980s. Knowledge is an essential precursor of sexual risk reduction. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Pulau Pinang, Malaysia, to produce the baseline information about school students' awareness and perception about sexually transmitted Infections (STIs) and their sexual activity to help establish control and education programmes.MethodsStudents from form 4 (aged between 15 to 16 years), form 5 (aged between 16 to 17 years) and form 6 (aged between 18 to 20 years) in their class rooms were approached and asked to complete self administered and anonymous pre-validated questionnaires. SPSS for windows version 13 was used to analyze the results statistically and results were presented in tabular form.ResultsData was collected from 1139 students aged between 15 to 20 years, 10.6% of which claimed that they never heard about STIs. Sexual experience related significantly with gender, race, and education level. Approximately 12.6% claimed to have sexual experience of which 75.7% had their sexual debut at 15-19 years and 38.2% were having more than 3 partners. Sexual experience was found to be significantly associated with gender (p = 0.003), ethnicity (p = 0.001) and education level (p = 0.030). However, multiple partner behaviour was significantly associated only with gender (p = 0.010). Mean knowledge score was 11.60 ± 8.781 and knowledge level was significantly associated with religion (p = 0.005) education level (p = 0.000), course stream (p = 0.000), socioeconomic class (p = 0.000) and sexual experience (p = 0.022).ConclusionsIt was concluded that school students have moderate level of knowledge about STIs although they are sexually active. Interventions such as reinforcing the link between STIs and HIV/AIDS, assessing the current status of sexuality education in schools and arranging public talks and seminars focusing on STIs prevention education are needed to improve their awareness.

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menopause symptoms in Brazil. METHODS: A total of 12,000 individuals' (age 18ϩ) self-reported data were collected from 2011 National Health and Wellness Survey (NHWS) in Brazil. QOL was measured by the physical component score (PCS) and mental component score (MCS) of the Short Form-12 (SF-12) (mean score of 47.2 for general population). Loss of work/productivity was measured by the validated Work Productivity and Activity Impairment instrument. Medical resource utilization was measured by healthcare provider, emergency room visits and hospitalization in the past 6 months. RESULTS: Among all women, 825 (13.8%) had completed menopause and 1,016 (20.8%) were currently experiencing symptoms of menopause. Average age for women currently experiencing symptoms of menopause was 49.6 years. Compared to the non-menopause group, those experiencing symptoms reported more co-morbidities (sleep difficulties 35%, insomnia 33%, depression 29%, high blood pressure 25%, high cholesterol 22%, arrhythmia/cardiac arrhythmia 17%), lower mean PCS scores (47.3 vs. 50.3), more patients visited general practitioners (56% vs. 49%), and higher mean number of visits (5.9 vs. 5.1) were observed over the past 6 months. Furthermore, those experiencing menopause symptoms reported greater impairment in daily activity (28%) compared to the non-menopause group (22.7%). All comparisons were statistically significant at pϽ 0.05. CONCLUSIONS: Results from the Brazil NHWSindicate women currently experiencing symptoms of menopause suffer from impairment in QOL, work/productivity loss, greater usage of healthcare resources and more co-morbidities. Findings indicate there is still an unmet medical need in menopause patients in Brazil.

high co-variability, when r ≥ 0.7, for regression analysis. The results of simple linear regression indicated that education status accounted for the greatest variance of the FACIT-TB total score, when the variance explained by all other variables in the model is controlled for (Beta = 0.325, P < 0.001), followed by financial status and smoking status. ConClusions: Our results confirmed that poor educational and financial statuses as well as being smokers are independent determinant of poor HRQL of PTB patients in Iraq.

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