Dr Abdulrazak Abyad  Chief Editor

In this issue of the journal there are two research papers on diabetes in primary care. Diabetes mellitus is quite prevalent disease in the Middle-East. In some of the countries the disease affect as many as 20 percent of the population. Changes in lifestyle such as decreased physical activity, increasing obesity and changes in food consumption, and ageing of the population have been implicated in this epidemic.

In the first paper on the "Use of drugs for diabetic neuropathy in a group of Turkish diabetic patients" Dr Mistik S et al stressed the fact that Diabetic neuropathy is a disease of peripheral nerves that occurs in at least 50% of patients who have had diabetes for 25 years. The aim of the study was to figure out the probable markers of early diabetic neuropathy. The paper concluded by stressing the necessity of diagnosis and treatment of diabetic neuropathy.

The second well designed research paper from Kuwait by Al-ShammariF KH et al, studied the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy and their risk factors in type II diabetes mellitus in al naeem area (Kuwait) case control study comparing type II diabetic with retinopathy and without retinopathy after group matching for age and sex to control confounders. The study involved 698 DM type II patients, 349 have retinopathy and 349 without retinopathy, 352 females and 346 males where identified and group matched for age and sex in al naeem clinic in jahra area (Kuwait). The authors concluded that type II diabetic with poor control of blood sugar, longer diabetes duration, nephropathy, on insulin treatment and body mass index >30 are more prone to develop retinopathy

An important paper on "Basic Nutrition: What Patients Know and Don't Know" by Larzelers et al evaluates the nutritional knowledge of a non-disease-specific group of people. In this study , a nutritional questionnaire that focuses on nutritional information given by physicians was pilot tested. The Survey that was completed by 232 participants reveals that the nutritional knowledge is poor, with demographic variations consistent with the literature. The authors stressed that since adequate nutritional knowledge is a necessary first step in improving healthy dietary behavior, additional efforts to appropriately counsel patients are necessary.

In a paper on smoking from Turkey the authors pointed that there are approximately 17 million smokers in Turkey. The authors looked at the attitudes and behaviors of physicians in Trakya University Hospital towards smoking. In this survey it was found that smoking rate was 45.5% . Smoking rates of Turkish physicians were higher than their colleagues in many other countries. Further more physicians are not thinking of quitting and they don't even have any desires to quit. The authors concluded that Turkish physicians need more education on smoking cessation.
The role of the nursing staff in communication is described in the paper on on "the comparison of Nurses" individual problems in C.C.U. and Emergency wards"from Iran. Dr Alsaeedi et al reviewed the topic of resless legs syndrome and periodic limb movements in sleep for the family physicians.

Haamdi I et al reviewed "the evaluation of quantitative heel ultrasound measurements in hemodialysis and continuous peritoneal dialysis patients"

The authors were looking to evaluate the bone measurements by quantitative heel ultrasound (QUS) in patients undergoing chronic haemodialysis (HD) and continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD), and healthy controls. The authors findings suggest that there is an unfavorable influence of HD and smoking on bone mineralization compared to CAPD