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Aim The most serious problem in health care setting is over use and misuse antibiotics particularly in Iran. In 2017, some programs were implemented by the Iranian Ministry of Health (MOH) to controlling the antibacterial agent consumption in hospitals. This study evaluates the impact of implementation a restriction policy in Ghaem university hospital, which tries to limit the prescription of eight expensive antibiotics. Method According to this policy the prescription of these antibiotics were only allowed by infectious disease specialists. The restriction policy of expensive antibiotics were initiated from April 21, 2018. We compared the consumption of these eight expensive antibiotics during 2 trimesters before and after the administration of this restriction policy. We also measured these drugs usage during the same period in previous year (April 21- July 22, 2017). Results The consumption was decreased 37.7% during trimester after the starting of restriction plan compare to similar period before it (p = 0). The consumption had also declined compare to the same period in previous year. Conclusions This simple restriction policy was effective in decreasing the antibiotic usage in Ghaem university hospital.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the factors affecting the intention of lettuce producers to engage in on-farm food safety (OFFS) practices in Iran. A research-based model incorporating the psychology-based theory of planned behavior (TPB) was proposed to obtain a better understanding of motivational factors underlying intention to engage in OFFS practices. The data were collected from the survey conducted in four different counties of Alborz province located at northern part of Iran, with a total of 230 lettuce producers randomly selected from these counties. Empirical results of a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that the three following components of the original TPB model had statistically significant positive relationships with farmers' engagement intention in OFFS practices and generally explained 41% of its variance. These components were attitude, perceived behavioral control (PBC) and social norms. Furthermore, after the inclusion of two constructs of moral norms and knowledge as additional intention predictors of the extended TPB model, the predictive power of the model was increased up to 16.4%, which is considerable. The findings provide valuable inputs to design effective approaches to motivate farmers’ engagement in food safety behaviors. They furthermore help policy makers to support farmers in OFFS practices' accomplishment in Iran.

In this study, ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE) of bioactive compounds from Feijoa sellowiana leaves was optimized using response surface methodology. Box-Behnken design was applied to evaluate the effects of ultrasonic intensity, duty cycle and extraction temperature on crude extraction yield (CEY) and radical scavenging activity (RSA) in terms of inhibition of DPPH , OH and ABTS + radicals. The correlation analysis of mathematical-regression models indicated that quadratic polynomial models could be employed to optimize UAE process. Under the optimal conditions (1569.10 W/cm2, 89.00% and 46.00 °C) the predicted values of the CEY and RSA of DPPH , OH and ABTS + were 53.22 mg g−1, 78.43%, 62.00% and 81.54%, respectively. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis showed that gallic acid, catechin, ferulic acid, quercetin and apigenin are the major phenolic compounds existed in the extracts. The improvement of UAE was investigated by combining pre-leaching stage (PLS) with optimized UAE conditions (PLS-UAE). Spectrophotometric methods and HPLC analysis results revealed that the bioactive phenolic compounds increased using PLS-UAE, where gallic acid had the highest concentration (123.15 ± 0.34 mg g−1). The comparative study results, which has been done between optimized UAE, PLS-UAE and conventional Soxhlet extraction (CSE) revealed that higher CEY (81.11 ± 0.11 mg g−1) could be achieved using CSE even through, the quality of extracts in terms of phenolic compounds and RSA was significantly (p-value