Effects of stress management and relationship-enrichment counseling on sexual and marital satisfaction of working women with high occupational stress

BACKGROUND

Industrialization of societies has placed considerable stress on employees influencing marital and sexual satisfaction. This study investigated the effects of stress management (SM) and relationship enrichment (RE) counseling on marital and sexual satisfaction in stressed women working at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences hospitals, Iran.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

In this quasi-experimental study, 75 nurses and midwives experiencing moderate-to-severe occupational stress after obtaining written informed consent were assigned to SM and RE counseling and control groups randomly. The SM and RE attended six-related counseling sessions, and control group received no intervention. The participants completed Osipow's Revised Occupational Stress Inventory (OSI-R), ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Scale, and Larson's Sexual Satisfaction Questionnaire before and 2 weeks after the intervention. The data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and ANCOVA.

RESULTS

SM counseling led to relatively good increase in sexual satisfaction. In addition, there was no significant difference between the three groups in the mean occupational stress scores and marital satisfaction scores.

CONCLUSION

SM counseling increased the level of sexual satisfaction. The approaches had no significant effect on occupational stress and marital satisfaction. Further studies are required to identify the best counseling approaches.

The impact of intestinal resection on serum levels of anti-Saccharomyces cerevisiae antibodies (ASCA) in patients with Crohn's disease

BACKGROUND

Antibodies to Saccharomyces cerevisiae (ASCA) are highly prevalent in sera of patients with Crohn's disease and have been proposed to identify subgroups of patients with a disabling disease course.

AIM

To investigate the impact of intestinal resection on serum levels of ASCA in patients with Crohn's disease and the predictive value of ASCA levels on surgical recurrence.

METHODS

Sera from 60 patients who underwent 'curative' intestinal resection due to stricturing and/or penetrating complications were collected preoperatively and during post-operative follow-up (week 2, months 4, 8 and 11 ± 1). Measurement of ASCA IgG and IgA isotypes were performed using ELISA. Re-operation rate was associated with ASCA status and serum levels.

RESULTS

At baseline 44/60 (73%) of patients were rated as positive for ASCA IgG, 45/60 (75%) for ASCA IgA and 52/60 (87%) as positive for at least one of both. ASCA serum levels remained stable during first year from resection. After a median of 106 months 10 of 40 (25%) patients with long-term follow-up underwent one or more intestinal re-operations. Neither ASCA positivity nor absolute ASCA serum levels were predictive of surgical recurrence.

CONCLUSIONS

Serum ASCA levels remain stable after curative intestinal resection in Crohn's disease. This indicates the persistence of both stimulus and immunological mechanism operative in the production of ASCA even after complete surgical resection of macroscopically inflamed intestinal tissue. After intestinal resection, neither ASCA positivity nor ASCA serum levels predict the risk of surgical recurrence during long-term follow-up.

Simultaneous determination of Fe(II) and Fe(III) in pharmaceutical formulations with chromogenic mixed reagent by using principal component artificial neural network and multivariate calibration

The use of chemometric approaches for the simultaneous determination of Fe(II) and Fe(III) ions has been explored by means of a two component reagent. Mixed reagents of 1,10-phenanthroline and thiocyanate were used as a selective chromogenic system for speciation of Fe(II) and Fe(III). Although the complexes of Fe(II) and Fe(III) with mixed reagent show a spectral overlap, they have been simultaneously determined with chemometric approaches, such as principal component artificial neural network (PC-ANN), principal component regression (PCR) and partial least squares (PLS). A set of synthetic mixtures of Fe(II) and Fe(III) was evaluated and the results obtained by the applications of these chemometric approaches were discussed and compared. It was found that the PC-ANN and PLS methods afforded better precision relatively than its of PCR. PC-ANN and PLS methods were also applied satisfactorily in determination of Fe(II) and Fe(III) in pharmaceutical samples.