Background It is estimated that more than half of all women in adolescence age suffer from dysmenorrhea and it often interferes with their daily physical and emotional aspects. It is the leading cause of short-term school absenteeism and is associated with a negative impact on academic and daily activities. Objectives To investigate impacts of dysmenorrhea, factors associated with it, and its self-management strategies used by health science students. Methods A cross-sectional institution based study was conducted among 246 Mekelle University health science students selected by stratified random sampling technique. Data were collected using self-administered semistructured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using SPSS 16. Results The prevalence of dysmenorrhea was 71.8%. Participants who had long menstrual cycle interval, long menses flows, and positive family history and who were alcohol users were more likely to had dysmenorrhea. Participants reported that 28.6% feel depressed, 16.2% are absent from class, and 22.9% had poor personal relationship due to dysmenorrhea and 78.2% of them practiced self-medication. Conclusion Dysmenorrhea is common among Mekelle University health science students and it is major problem representing the cause of feeling depressed, poor personal relationship, and class absenteeism. Majority of the study participants used self-medication to treat dysmenorrhea.

Introduction: Surgical site infection represents a significant burden in terms of patients' morbidity, mortality and hospital costs which can be prevented using prophylaxis.

Purpose This study was conducted to evaluate the validity of drug promotion materials (DPMs) in Ethiopia. Methods A cross sectional document review was done. DPMs were evaluated for fulfilment of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) criteria for ethical promotion of drugs. They were also evaluated for font size, type of formulation, claims made, pictures depicted, retrievability and source of references used. Results A total of 235 DPMs were collected from the community and hospital pharmacies. Documents promoting devices and equipment, orthopedic appliances, reminder cards and drug lists were excluded, leaving 173 promotional materials. Antimicrobials were the most promoted drugs (27.2%) followed by respiratory drugs (11.0%) and gastrointestinal drugs (9.8%). Brand name was written in all of the DPMs while approved generic names, indication and active ingredient per dosage form were written in 94.8%, 92.5% and 62.4% respectively. Side effects and contraindications were written in 27.2% and 18.5% of the DPMs. A total of 223 claims were made. Efficacy was the dominant claim (62.3%) followed by safety (8.5%). Pictorial demonstrations were used in 84.4% of the DPMs. Almost half of the pictures depicted, 47.3%, were the cover of the drug products. Only 48.6% of the DPMs has supported their claims with references. Review articles account for 23.3% of the references. Only 5.8% of the journal articles were published after the year 2013. Conclusion We conclude that the design and content of studied drug promotional materials are most effective as sales materials rather than thorough informational vehicles. The WHO and Food, Medicine and Health Care Administration and Control Authority of Ethiopia recommendations are rarely met.

ObjectivesAnti-tuberculosis drug-induced hepatotoxicity is a common serious adverse drug reaction. This study intended to determine the prevalence and associated factors of drug-induced hepatotoxicity among tuberculosis and human immunodeficiency virus co-infected patients in Dessie referral hospital northeast Ethiopia.ResultsIn this cross-sectional study 84 patients were enrolled retrospectively. Data from September 1/2015 to August 30/2018 were extracted from March 1/2019 to April 1/2019. Association between dependent and independent variables was determined using the odds ratio and a P value of < 0.05 was considered as statistical significance. Out of 84 patients, 17 patients developed drug-induced hepatotoxicity which makes the prevalence of drug-induced hepatotoxicity 20.2%. The result revealed that the presence of disseminated or extrapulmonary tuberculosis [(AOR: 7.728, 95% CI (1.516–39.404)] and/or body mass index less than 18.5 kg/m2 [(AOR = 5.593, 95% CI (1.180–26.519)] were a risk factor for drug-induced hepatotoxicity. Tuberculosis and human immunodeficiency virus co-infected patients with extra- pulmonary tuberculosis and/or body mass index less than 18.5 kg/m2 should be closely followed and supervised for the development of hepatotoxicity.

Introduction: Clinically significant drug-drug interactions reduce effectiveness of drugs or cause fatal adverse events. Although harmful drug interactions are preventable, clinicians' recognition and detection of drug interactions is not optimal.