This edition of the Annals of Ibadan Postgraduate Medicine comprises six original papers covering a range of disciplines and would thus appeal to a multi- disciplinary readership. Four of the six papers focus on various non-communicable conditions, emphasizing the increasing importance of these conditions to disease morbidity and mortality in developing countries. One paper covers a contemporary issue in HIV prevention and one straddles the communicable and non-communicable disease divide and reports the association between a non-communicable condition – intimate partner violence and occurrence of a communicable disease – Sexually Transmitted Infection among married women.
Kotila et al. in their paper titled, ‘Addiction or pseudoaddiction in sickle cell disease patients: Time to decide – A case series”, describe a series of patients with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD); five of whom were diagnosed with addiction and five with pseudo- addiction. They highlight the fact that pseudo addiction and addiction are understudied problems among patients with SCD and recommend that opioid use in pain control among these patients needs to be regulated.
Sigbeku and colleagues present findings from a study on, “Experience of intimate partner violence as a predictor of sexually transmitted infections among married women in Nigeria”. Data for the study were drawn from the 2008 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS). They find that as many as thirty percent of the respondents had experienced violence from their intimate partners and about seven percent reported having symptoms of a Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) within 12 month preceding the survey. A history of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) was found to be a significant predictor of STI symptoms. The authors recommend that screening for IPV should be an integral part of STI treatment