Assalamu alaykum.

Abstract

I am happy to report the good news that we have been striving to achieve: JIMA will be indexed! JIMA has passed the first stage of acceptance to the PubMed Central archive. All that remains is the technical aspect of converting our articles, including information such as the authors, supplementary files, key words and references, into the format the National Library of Medicine requires. I expect that the recent issues of JIMA will be in the archive by the end of the year, and all future issues will become available shortly after publication. PubMed Central is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the United States National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM). Researchers commonly search PubMed for peer-reviewed literature, and if they include all available databases in their search, JIMA articles will in sha Allahجل جلاله soon be returned in the search results. This further increases the exposure of research published in JIMA, and I hope that it will encourage more researchers worldwide to submit their manuscripts to our journal, thus improving its content. This is the conference issue. The conference this year is held in beautiful San Juan, Puerto Rico. This issue contains the program and the abstracts. In addition, it contains quite interesting articles summarized below. An article by Sumiya Khan et al discusses lunch programs at Islamic schools. The authors surveyed 100 schools. Only 48 responded, and only 20 were following the national guidelines. Only five have dietitians involved in menu planning. This is a serious concern that needs to be addressed. The authors outlined the minimum nutritional requirements for school lunches. They gave an extensive listing of healthful school lunch menus, including both American and ethnic items. They also gave listings of appropriate and inappropriate drinks, snacks, and lunch items for both the schools and, more importantly, for the parents of the students who attend schools that do not provide lunches. They also provided the schools with nutrition policy statement suggestions. The authors finally encouraged the Islamic schools to apply for grants to supplement their budgets to enable them to provide nutritional lunches for their students and to develop in them a healthful dietetic lifestyle. This study was a combined effort of IMANA and Muslims in Dietetics and Nutrition (MIDAN). I look forward to a follow-up study by the authors to document any changes that have been made based on their recommendations. An article by Yehia et al discusses the prevalence of Histoplasma capsulatum and Blastomyces dermatidis in Iraqi patients with lower respiratory tract infections. These included 150 immunocompetent and 150 presumably immunocompromised patients. There were 218 fungal isolates, and only six of these were true pathogenic fungi. There were two Histoplasma capsulatum isolates from two immunocompromised patients and four Blastommyces dermatidis isolates from two immunocompetent and two immunocompromised patients. Another article by Islam et al from Bangalore, India, discusses the prevalence of malaria, dengue and chikungunya and correlates it to mosquito breeding sites. They surveyed 670 subjects from 162 homes using a specially developed questionnaire to collect epidemiologic and clinical data, ELISA tests to detect dengue, and chikungunya antibodies and blood films to diagnose malaria. They collected water samples from within the houses, around the houses, and from external sites. The samples were used to detect and identify larvae. There were 33 cases of chikungunya, three cases of dengue, and 11 cases of malaria detected. Out of the water samples 51 were positive: 37 for Aedes, 12 for Anopheles, and two for Culex. There was a correlation between the studied mosquito-borne diseases and the mosquito breeding sites. This issue also includes an intriguing article about genetics and Islam. Dr. Ghareeb, a geneticist, searched the Qur’an and Hadith for what he considered references to modern genetics. He discusses such concepts as modes of inheritance, genetic counseling, natural selection before and after fertilization, cytoplasmic inheritance, sex chromosomes and Message from the Editor