Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiological (PURE) Study

  Prof. Nizal Sarraf Zadegan

The PURE study was designed and coordinated by the Population Health Research Institute, McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The PURE is an ongoing international large-scale community-based prospective cohort study which started between 2003 and 2009 in different countries.  This study has been performed to examine the association of urbanization with the development of behavioural, environmental as well as metabolic risk factors and cardiovascular disease (CVD) events. It has been carried out in 628 urban and rural communities in 17 countries from 5 continent in the world including Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, China, Turkey, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Poland, Sweden, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia countries that vary widely in political, sociocultural, and economic conditions. Then 10 other countries consist of Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Palestine, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania and Uruguay were added. Totally 225000 participants aged 35-70 years have been recruited in 27 countries.

PURE Iran

From September 2006, PURE Iran is being conducted in Isfahan, a large province in central part of Iran with a population of 4,559,256. This study recruited 6013 adults aged 35-70, including 3001 men and 3012 women. Cluster random sampling method was applied and 20 clusters consisting of 11 urban and 9 rural areas were chosen. We selected 3031 and 2982 urban and rural population at baseline, respectively. Trained interviewers referred to their home. After obtaining informed consent from the eligible participants, they were invited to the nearest health center. All questionnaires including household, adult, food frequency questionnaire, international physical activity questionnaire were obtained by trained interviewers. Physical examinations and all measurements were conducted in the health center.