The effect of peer-to-peer education on health literacy, knowledge, and adherence to COVID-19 protocols in vulnerable adolescents.

BACKGROUND: The study was done to examine the effectiveness of peer-to-peer education on increasing health literacy, knowledge s, and observance of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) health prevention protocols in vulnerable adolescents. METHOD: The study was a one-group intervention (before and after the intervention) that was performed on 1200 vulnerable adolescents living in varamin. The educational intervention was presented to adolescents in a face-to-face session. In the next step, the adolescents were taught the information received by three members of their families. Data were evaluated using a self-designed questionnaire before, and three months after the intervention. The paired t-test was used to compare scores of health literacy, compliance, and knowledge before and after the intervention at a 0.05 confidence level. The Multiple linear regression model was used to determine the predictive factors of observance of COVID-19 preventive behaviors. RESULTS: The most of adolescents were in the age group of 14 to 18 years (60%) and most of them were girls (61.5%). The most important source of information about COVID-19 disease was radio and television (59.6%). The results showed that the effectiveness of the intervention in increasing the adolescents' health literacy, knowledge, and adherence to preventive behaviors were 40%, 30%, and 23%, respectively. The effectiveness of the intervention in increasing their families' health literacy and adherence to the protocols were 11% and 20%, respectively (p = 0.001). DISCUSSION: Involving volunteer adolescents as health ambassadors and transmitting messages and methods of promoting personal protection against COVID-19 epidemics to family members had a significant effect on increasing the knowledge and adherence to the health procedures.

NMDA receptors of blood lymphocytes anticipate cognitive performance variations in healthy volunteers.

Working memory (WM) system, temporarily stores information and uses this information for complex cognitive tasks. WM connects memory, emotional feelings and perception. Evidence compelling that N-methyl d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) expression relatively affect WM performance in animal models. It has been suggested some peripheral blood lymphocyte's (PBL) receptors are similar with neuronal receptors in the brain, so we measured PBL's receptors changes as a marker of the neuronal receptor. In this study, we examined one hundred adult men with Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) as a tool for primary screening for executive function (EF) which include WM. Then, we selected fifty individuals with high and low WCST scores. With digit span and symmetry span tasks, we screened 20 samples for high WM group and 19 samples for low WM group. After separating PBL, we measured mRNA expression level changes in NMDAR subunits with Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction method. We demonstrated that GluN2D increased and GluN3A decreased in individuals with high WM compared with the low WM (P < .01 and P < .001, respectively). The expression levels of GluN2A, GluN2B, and GluN3B were not altered between two groups (P > .05). Modifying the PBL receptors could be future approaches to defend memory loss and concentrate the senses over WM-related processes in physiological and pathological statuses. We hypothesized that increasing in GluN2 subunits and decreasing in GluN3 subunits led to improving current via NMDAR and subsequently affect WM.