The Effect of a Health Education Intervention on Salivary Cotinine Levels among Guilds of Chabahar, Iran

In general, cotinine is taken into account as one of the stable metabolites of nicotine. The most common application of this biomarker is to measure tobacco exposure. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of a health education intervention on salivary cotinine levels among Chabahar guilds.The present investigation was a quasi-experimental study design with one intervention group. The population study has been performed on the guilds of all classes in Chabahar city in 2019. A total of 320 participants were selected by the simple random sampling method. The baseline cotinine contents were determined for 150 participants by the random sampling technique. The intervention was performed in three training sessions using group discussion methods, lectures, imagery, documentation, brainstorming, and social media (WhatsApp). After six months from the intervention, the consumption behaviors were measured in the same 320 participants. Also, the cotinine levels were measured in the same 150 participants. The obtained data were analyzed using descriptive and analytical tests in SPSS statistical software version 20.In the post-intervention phase, 34.4% of guilds reported that they did not use SLT, and a significant relationship was observed between consumption status before and after the intervention (P 0.001). Also, the mean score of salivary cotinine significantly dropped from 588.02 ± 344.4 m m^-1 to 240.19 ± 300.8 m m^-1 in the post-intervention stage (P 0.001).The cessation of SLT products in the present study and a significant reduction in cotinine levels in the post-intervention phase were compared to the pre-intervention phase. The results confirmed the effect of a health education intervention on the participants. It is suggested that the researchers measure the levels of cotinine in addition to the self-report questionnaire.