Background As one of the world's most serious health concerns, substance abuse has major health impacts on addicts, their families and society, as a whole. The aim of the present study was to provide evidence with detailed prevalence estimates of smoking, alcohol consumption and drug abuse among the respondents of Azar cohort study, in Tabriz, Iran. Methods The Azar cohort study is a part of PERSIAN cohort study, aimed to examine the risk factors of common non-communicable diseases among Iranian adults. The data on 15006 subjects with 35 to 70 years of age including tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption and drug abuse and socio-demographic characteristics were analyzed. Due to the difference in the number of male and female samples, the prevalence of substance abuse for the entire sample was calculated using the direct standardization method, with a 95% confidence interval. Results Totally, 9.3% and 6.2% of the participants were regular cigarette smoker and heavy cigarette smoker, respectively. Also, 1.9% and 2.1% of participants were illicit drug user and alcohol drinker, respectively. Substance abuse were more prevalent among males, compared to females. There were significant differences between substance abuse, age and socio-economic variables. Also, there were strong associations between the mentioned three substance abuse behaviors. Conclusion Demographic and socio-economic status were contributed to smoking, alcohol consumption and drug abuse. Therefore, high-risk groups should be taken into account while designing substance abuse prevention programs. We also identified associations between the three risky behaviors, which shows the emergency of need for intervention on the group that has the three risky behaviors, simultaneously.

Background and aim Marriage is one of the most important phenomena in human life. The survival of the marriage and the impact of various competing factors on the survival is of high importance. This study aimed at utilizing competing risks survival analysis to investigate the marriage survival of new couples in Tabriz. Methods In this longitudinal study, a number of 386 individuals who were married and divorced from 1991 to 2017, were selected by random sampling. The registered information was attained from the general registry office of Tabriz. Data analysis was carried out using the Lunn-McNeil procedure and the results were presented using an adjusted hazard ratio (AHR). Results The average age of marriage was about 23.9 (SD 6.6) years. The results of multivariate Lunn-McNeil models indicated that for the competing cause of having a relationship with another person (AHRs range: 1.12 to 2.03), the traditional mode of being familiar (AHRs range: 1.55 to 3.39), family weak role in choosing a wife/spouse (AHRs range: 0.25 to 3.25) and the role of moral-religious commitment (AHRs range: 0.37 to 0.47), along with other causes severed the risk of marriage survival reduction. Conclusion According to the results of this study in assessing competing risks, we conclude that the decline in marriage survival is a multifactorial phenomenon. Examining the survival of marriage in order to better understand all the dimensions and factors affecting this phenomenon and providing information to counselors and officials can play an important role in increasing marriage survival.

Background: Substance abuse has significant health impacts on families and society as a whole. We aimed to provide detailed prevalence estimates of substance abuse among the Azar Cohort Study respondents in Tabriz, Iran. Methods: Data on 15006 participants of Azar Cohort Study were analyzed. The variables included tobacco smoking, alcohol use, drug abuse, and socio-demographic characteristics. The prevalence of substance abuse (with a 95% confidence interval) was calculated using the direct standardization method. Results: Overall, 9.3% and 6.2% of the participants were regular and heavy cigarette smokers, respectively. Also, 1.9% and 2.1% of participants reported a history of using illicit drugs and alcohol, respectively. Substance abuse was more prevalent among males than females. Substance abuse varied significantly with age and socioeconomic variables. Conclusion: We identified specific demographic and socioeconomic groups with a higher prevalence of all studied behaviors. Such high-risk groups should be targeted when designing substance abuse prevention programs.