Osteoporosis is a major public health problem in Western countries and is projected to have a similar impact in the Middle East. It has been suggested that peak bone mineral density (BMD), a major determinant of osteoporotic fractures later in life, may be lower in this part of the world compared with the Western world. However, subjects have not been randomly selected or systematically screene...

in the course of our faunistic survey on leafhoppers (hem.: cicadellidae) in northwestern iran, 46 species were collected and identified of which the species macrosteles chobauti ribaut, 1952 is newly recorded from iran. drs. hani abdul-nour (lebanese university, lebanon) and paul freytag (university of kentucky, usa) confirmed the identification of the species.

The Eastern Mediterranean basin is facing a high invasion rate of mainly Indo-Pacific species entering through the Suez Canal. The needlespined urchin, Diadema setosum, was first documented in the Mediterranean in 2006 off southern Turkey. The new record of D. setosum in September 2009 represents the first evidence of its presence in Lebanese coastal waters.

Emergence of carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter spp. has been increasingly reported worldwide. We report here the first detection of an Acinetobacter calcoaceticus isolate from vegetables in Lebanon carrying the bla Oxa-72 gene. These findings show that the Lebanese environment may constitute a potential reservoir for this antibiotic resistance gene.

Joe J. Khalife is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Riverside and a member of the ASPIN Laboratory. He received a B.E. in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. in Computer Engineering from the Lebanese American University (LAU). From 2012 to 2015, he was a research assistant at LAU. His research interests include opportunistic navigation, autonomous vehicles, and software-defined ra...

1Saint Joseph University Faculty of Medicine, Hôtel-Dieu de France Hospital, Lebanon 2Chief of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Lebanese American University Medical Center Rizk Hospital, Lebanon 3Department of Pediatric Surgery, Al-Hayat Hospital, Lebanon 4Department of Radiology, Al-Hayat Hospital, Lebanon 5Department of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, Saint George Hospital University Medi...

EDITOR—The most common sensory deficit in humans is hearing loss, aVecting 1 in 1000 children, with approximately half of the cases having a genetic cause. The majority of these genetic causes are non-syndromic, of which approximately 75% have an autosomal recessive mode of inheritance. So far, nearly 30 genes that cause non-syndromic recessive deafness (NSRD) have been located (for review see ...

BACKGROUND Influenza is a common preventable infectious disease associated with high mortality and morbidity. Vaccination is the most cost-effective measure to prevent influenza, yet the vaccine uptake is known to be low. No previous studies have assessed the rate of seasonal influenza vaccination use among the Lebanese population, nor examined the knowledge and attitudes towards the influenza ...