Tahereh Hashem

OBJECTIVE: There is no universal consensus on the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and breast cancer. This meta-analysis was conducted to estimate the overall effect of overweight and obesity on breast cancer risk during pre- and post-menopausal period. DATA SOURCES: All major electronic databases were searched until April 2012 including Web of Knowledge, Medline, Scopus, and ScienceDirect. Furthermore, the reference lists and related scientific conference databases were searched. REVIEW METHODS: All prospective cohort and case-control studies investigating the association between BMI and breast cancer were retrieved irrespective of publication date and language. Women were assessed irrespective of age, race and marital status. The exposure of interest was BMI. The primary outcome of interest was all kinds of breast cancers confirmed pathologically. Study quality was assessed using the checklist of STROBE. Study selection and data extraction were performed by two authors separately. The effect measure of choice was risk ratio (RR(i)) and rate ratio (RR(a)) for cohort studies and odds ratio (OR) in case-control studies. RESULTS: Of 9163 retrieved studies, 50 studies were included in meta-analysis including 15 cohort studies involving 2,104,203 subjects and 3,414,806 person-years and 35 case-control studies involving 71,216 subjects. There was an inverse but non-significant correlation between BMI and breast cancer risk during premenopausal period: OR = 0.93 (95% CI 0.86, 1.02); RR(i) = 0.97 (95% CI 0.82, 1.16); and RR(a) = 0.99 (95% CI 0.94, 1.05), but a direct and significant correlation during postmenopausal period: OR = 1.15 (95% CI 1.07, 1.24); RR(i) = 1.16 (95% CI 1.08, 1.25); and RR(a) = 0.98 (95% CI 0.88, 1.09). CONCLUSION: The results of this meta-analysis showed that body mass index has no significant effect on the incidence of breast cancer during premenopausal period. On the other hand, overweight and obesity may have a minimal effect on breast cancer, although significant, but really small and not clinically so important.

Objective: Cancer related fatigue is a distressing condition and correlated with decrease in quality of life of patients with malignant conditions. In continuation of our previous research, we assessed long term anti-fatigue effects of melatonin in patients with the breast cancer. Material and methods: In this clinical trial, 92 breast cancer patients were randomly assigned to receive either melatonin (18 mg/day) or placebo from 1 week before the adjuvant treatments until 2 years after their completion. The levels of fatigue were assessed before and after intervention using Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI) and were compared at a significance level of P ≤ .05. Results: The BFI scores were similar between the 2 groups at the baseline (placebo group: 5.56 ± 1.59 and melatonin group: 5.72 ± 1.68, P = .67). After the intervention, not only the mean fatigue score was significantly lower in melatonin group (2.93 ± 1.04 vs 1.99 ± 1.02, P < .001, P ≤ .05), but also a greater reduction in fatigue score in intervention group was evident over time ( P ≤ .001). Conclusion: Long-term usage of melatonin even after completion of adjuvant therapies in women with breast cancer decreased the levels of fatigue associated with the malignant condition and its treatments. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number: Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials, https://en.irct.ir/trial/62267 , IRCT20180426039421N3

Introduction. This study was conducted to define some standard measures for interpupillary distance (PD) in different age groups of an Iranian population.
 Methods. This study was performed on 1500 patients aged between 5 to 80 years (947 cases older than 19 years) referring to Farabi hospital (Ophtalmologic Center affiliated to Isfahan University of Medical Sciences and Health Services) during 1992-1993. Complete ophtalmologic examination was done for each patient including interpupillary distance measurement by objective autorefractometer. Non of the cases had any other ocular pathology except primary refractive error.
 Results. The mean of P.D in adults was 62z3.73 mm. This mean was 61.13±3.47 mm in women and 63.57±3.90 mm in men (P<0.001). In 96.2 percent of adults PD was in a range of 55-70 mm. This study indicates the association between PD and age (r=0.33 in women and r=0.47 in men).
 Discussion. PD is larger in men than women. The increasing of PD is continued even after 30 years old.