STRESS-INDUCED IMMUNE-RELATED DISEASE AND HEALTH OUTCOME OF PHARMACY AND DENTISTRY STUDENTS-PILOT STUDY

Noura Tarek Sharab, Lana Khaled Barake, Ammar Abdulrahman Jairoun and Moyad Shahwan*

ABSTRACT

Stress and its impact on health sciences students were broadly studied. In our knowledge, there was no studies conducted in United Arab Emirates to measure the stress and its effects on the immune responses among Pharmacy and Dentistry students while few studies was conducted on pharmacy students only. The objective of this study was[1] to examine the self-reported perceived stresses among the participants[2] to discuss the health outcomes and immune-related diseases and[3] determine if there is a significant difference between socio-demographic and life style factors regarding health and immune related diseases. A self-reported questionnaire was administrated to a sample of 293 students at Ajman University, Pharmacy and Dentistry students. Data were analyzed by Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20. Chi-square and Fisher's exact tests for analyzing question. A number of stressors were associated with general health, as lack of exercise, skipping meals, study year and credit hour load. However no significant difference was found between pharmacy and dentistry programs regarding health outcomes. Considering the immune-related diseases in response to gender, higher proportions of female stated that they caught cold/flu and they had skin/hair problems compared to males. Moreover, it was found that first years were associated with more cold/flu and skin/hair problem compared to final years. However, results will help in increasing the awareness of students by acting as a prior warning to what they might face during their program and how can they reduce the negative stressors and tendency to infections and diseases.

Keywords: Stress; Immune-related; Health-outcomes; Pharmacy; Dentistry; Students.