Trends of Obesity in Iranian Adults from 1990s to late 2000s; a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Background: Obesity is currently emerging as a global epidemic, affecting 10% of adultpopulation worldwide. The primary objective of the current systematic reviewis to describe the trend of overall prevalence of obesity in Iranian women andmenthrough a meta-analysis.

Methods: We searched the medical literature published from 1990 to 2007 in Medline(PubMed), EMBASE database, and the Iranian digital library.

Prevalence of Iron Deficiency Anemia among Iranian Pregnant Women; a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Introduction: Anemia, particularly Iron Deficiency Anemia (IDA), is the most common hematological disorder during pregnancy with considerable complications in both mothers and fetuses. The estimation of anemia prevalence is an important step for health policy makers. Despite being considered a hot topic in epidemiological studies in Iran for the last twenty years, lack of a comprehensive overview on the findings encouraged the authors to carry out this study.

Accuracy and coverage of reproductive health information on the Internet accessed in English and Persian from Iran.

Background And Methodology: The Internet is a useful resource for obtaining information. We evaluated the accuracy and coverage of reproductive health information on the Internet in English- and Persian-language sites accessed from Iran. An expert committee decided on five reproductive health topics to be evaluated and specified a checklist of content for these (36 items in total).

Blood pressure and its influencing factors in a national representative sample of Iranian children and adolescents: the CASPIAN Study.

Background: This study was performed to determine the blood pressure (BP) percentile curves by height, as well as to assess the prevalence of high BP and its influencing factors among children in the first national survey in this field in Iran.

Design: A multicentre national cross-sectional survey.

Methods: This study was performed in 23 provinces among a representative sample of 21,111 students aged 6-18 years.

Association of physical activity and the metabolic syndrome in children and adolescents: CASPIAN Study.

Background/aim: To determine the association of physical activity and the metabolic syndrome in a large national-representative sample of children.

Methods: This study was performed in 2003-2004 on 4,811 school students aged 6-18 years, selected by multi-stage random cluster sampling from six provinces in Iran. We assessed the level of physical activity using a standardized questionnaire, and categorized it to the tertiles.