Avian Influenza Knowledge among Medical Students, Iran

Avian Influenza Knowledge among Medical Students, Iran

To the Editor: Avian infl uenza is an infectious disease caused by type A strains of infl uenza virus (1). Since January 2004, Thailand and several other Southeast Asian countries have experienced outbreaks of avian infl uenza in poultry, and >100 million poultry have been culled or have died (www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_infl uenza/en). The prevalence of severe and fatal cases involving bird-to-human transmission is increasing (2). Experts fear that the avian infl uenza virus now circulating in Asia will mutate into a highly infectious strain and pass not only from animals to humans, but also among humans, which would lead to a pandemic (3).
During a pandemic, public health agencies and medical students will play critical roles in controlling the spread of disease (4). Therefore, med-ical school curricula should include specifi c courses in the epidemiology of avian infl uenza to ensure that all medical students and health care professionals will have the knowledge needed to confront a potential pandemic. In Iran, medical education comprises basic sciences (fi rst to third year), externship (fourth to fi fth year, preclinical education), and internship (sixth to seventh year). Medical students study virology during the second year of medical school. Thereafter, no additional coursework in virology is offered. Because several cases of avian infl uenza have been found in adjacent countries such as Turkey and Iraq, we anticipate that the virus will spread to Iran. Therefore, we designed a study to assess the knowledge of a group of Iranian medical students regarding avian infl uenza and to delineate the potential source of their knowledge.
The study population comprised second-and third-year medical students at the Faculty of Medicine, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, in May 2006. We used a self-adminis-tered questionnaire that was based on information obtained from a review of the literature on avian infl uenza. This questionnaire (Table) comprised 3 sections: 1) demographic information, including age and sex of participants (2 items); 2) avian infl uenza-related questions covering general information, history, modes of transmission, clinical symptoms, and prevention (18 items); and 3) a multiple-choice question regarding the students' source of information about avian infl uenza (1 item). (As shown, the questionnaire used the common parlance "bird fl u" for avian infl uenza.) Possible responses for section 2 included "yes," "no," and "I don't know." The knowledge score was calculated by giving +1 for a correct answer, -1 for an incorrect answer, and zero for "I don't know" responses. A total of 18 points could be achieved if all questions in section 2 were correctly answered. Higher scores indicated a greater level of knowledge. We invited 2 epidemiologists and 1 statistician to qualify and examine the questions. Data were pre-

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Emerging Infectious Diseases • www.cdc.gov/eid • Vol. 14, No. 4, April 2008 sented in mean ± standard deviation or percentage when appropriate. Statistical analysis was performed by SPSS Windows version 12.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) using the χ 2 test; p value was set at 0.05. Two hundred thirty-four of 252 second-and third-year medical students completed the questionnaire. The mean age of the respondents was 19 ± 0.87 years (range 18-23). Twentynine percent (n = 68) of the students were male and 71% (n = 166) were female.
The mean knowledge score was 4.76 of 18 (total of correct and incorrect responses) (range -6 to 11). Second-and third-year students comparably responded to 16/18 questions (χ 2 test). A list of questions and the percentage of students' responses are provided in the Table. Most of the respondents (67.2%) indicated that mass media (radio, television, and newspapers) was their major source of information about avian infl uenza, followed by scientifi c books and journals (8.3%), the Internet, (13%), and family and friends (10.4%). Only 1.1% of the medical students mentioned "school educational materials" as the source of their information.
Our study shows a relatively low level of knowledge of avian infl uenza among a group of Iranian medical students. Surprisingly, mass media was the main source of information in our study. Training health care professionals as well as medical students is of great importance in controlling infectious diseases. The fi ndings of this study should be considered seriously by local health centers and disease control agencies because preparing health care professionals with suffi cient knowledge is essential to confronting a potential pandemic. We believe that the low level of knowledge about avian infl uenza among these medical students is primarily a refl ection of insuffi cient academic courses in the medical school curriculum.
We strongly recommend improving the quality of education on this topic through access to textbooks, articles, seminars, and specifi c courses. To the Editor: Legionellosis is a pneumonia caused by inhalation of Legionella spp. in aerosol water particles. Legionella pneumophila is responsible for ≈90% of cases; serogroup 1 alone accounts for ≈85% of cases (1). Epidemiologic analyses based on pulsedfi eld gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and sequence-based typing of clinical isolates of L. pneumophila serogroup 1 have detected sporadic, epidemic, and endemic strains (2). Most cases are sporadic and are associated with strains that have not been identifi ed. A strain is considered endemic to an area when several isolates that have identical PFGE patterns and that cause several epidemiologically unrelated cases of legionellosis are detected in that area. Since 1998, the most prevalent strain endemic to France has been the Paris strain (3), which was responsible for 12.2% of culture-confi rmed cases of legionellosis from 1998 through 2002 (3). The Paris strain has also been detected in clinical samples from several other European countries (Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Sweden) and in environmental samples (3,4).

Kamyar
We identifi ed a new endemic clone of L. pneumophila serogroup 1, the Lorraine strain, and report its spread throughout France. The French national reference center for Legionella collects all clinical isolates of Legionella spp. as part of an epidemiologic surveillance system. All L. pneumophila serogroup 1 isolates are typed by PFGE methods as described (4). When necessary, sequence-based typing (5,6) and monoclonal antibody-based (MAb) subgrouping are also used (7).
From 1995 through 2006, the reference center typed 1,768 clinical Legionella isolates by means of PFGE. Most PFGE patterns were unique and thus corresponded to sporadic cases. Another 145 (8.2%) patterns were identical and corresponded to the endemic Paris strain. An identical PGFE pattern was also found for 80 (4.5%) isolates from epidemiologically unrelated patients; these isolates were further characterized by sequencebased typing and MAb subgrouping. Sequence type was deduced for the following genes: fl aA, pilE, asd, mip, mompS, proA, and neuA (6). The sequence type was obtained for 78 of the 80 isolates and was 5, 10, 22, 15, 6, 2, 6. The sequence type of the remaining 2 isolates differed from that of the other 78 by 2 alleles (pilE and proA) and was 5, 1, 22, 15, 6, 10, 6