JOURNAL OF TORBAT HEYDARIYEH UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES
Year:2017 | Volume:4 | Issue:4|Papers Count:8

Background & Aim: Plants are useful natural sources of antioxidants for improving blood glucose control and preventing long-term complications of diabetes. The use of medicinal plants in the treatment of diabetes has shown significant impacts in reducing blood glucose in diabetic patients. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of hydro-alcoholic extract of Prosopis farcta root on blood glucose, body weight and gene expression of pyruvate kinase (PK) in diabetic rats.Methods: 45 male wistar rats (average 250 gr) were randomly divided into three groups equally: healthy controls and diabetic controls and diabetic treated with the hydro-alcoholic extract of Prosopis farcta root. Type 1 diabetes was induced by i.p injection of streptozotocin (60 mg / kg BW). Rats were weighted at day 0, 15 and at the end of the study. Diabetic rats treated daily with 300 (mg/kg) for 30 days. Healthy control and diabetic control groups received distilled water during this time. Blood glucose and PK gene expression were measured on the 0, 15 and 30th days after feeding hydroalcoholic root extract of P. farcta. The data were analyzed by one-way ANOVA followed by LSD, and Dunnet T3 post-hoc test (P<0.05).Results: PK gene expression analysis showed its expression increased in treated rats compared to the control diabetes group on the 15th day of study but this declined on the 30th day (p<0.05). Also administration of P. farcta to diabetic rats resulted in a significant increase in body weight and a marked hypoglycemic effect was also seen in them (p<0.05).Conclusion: According to achieved data of this study, it is suggested that a treatment of diabetic rats with hydro alcoholic root extract of Prosopis farcta could possibly reduce blood glucose by increasing the expression of PK.

Background & Aim: Realistic expectations from marriage are of the most important factors in a successful marriage. To achieve this goal, premarital counseling is an effective step. This study examines the impact of premarital counseling on marriage expectation among university students.Methods: This quasi-experimental study has been conducted on 30 single students of Torbat Heydariyeh University of Medical Sciences. The assessment tools were marriage expectation scale and demographic information questionnaire that were completed in the pre-test and posttest by participants. The intervention group participated in 8 sessions of 2 hours premarital counseling and the control group received no intervention. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent and paired T-test.Results: The mean and standard deviation of participants' age was 19.33±0.61 and 19.92±1.07 in control and intervention groups, respectively. Before the study, in terms of background variables, there were no significant differences between two groups. Premarital counseling could improve the expectation from marriage among university students (p<0.05).Conclusion: Premarital counseling is suggested to empower students for establishing a good and suitable marriage.

Background & Aim: Cancer is one of the chronic diseases with increasing prevalence in children that has many psychological outcomes, one of which is anxiety. This study was conducted to determine the effect of aerobics on mild anxiety in children with cancer.Methods: The current research is a quasi-experimental study. The study population was all of the 7-12 years old children with cancer hospitalized in the oncology ward of one of the hospitals in Tehran in 2014. The anxiety in children was measured through Beck Children Anxiety Inventory and 31 eligible children were selected through convenience sampling. Intervention was done in 6 group sessions of 45 minutes via the implementation of aerobics in the playroom. The anxiety of the children was measured again in the last day of intervention (sixth day) and also three weeks later. The data were analyzed by using the repeated measures ANOVA, independent T-test, Pearson’s correlation and one-way ANOVA in the SPSS 18.Results: The results showed that the mean score of Anxiety in children significantly decreased after the intervention (11.04 ± 1.33) and three weeks later (12.16 ± 1.94) in comparison with the readings taken before the intervention (10.58 ± 2.12) (P<0.001).Conclusion: The results revealed that as a non-pharmacological intervention aerobics can reduce the mild Anxiety in children with cancer. Therefore, aerobics is recommended in order to restore the health and vitality of hospitalized children.

Background & Aim: These days it is expected that postmenopausal women live a healthier life for more years. Although sexual relations play an important role for the stability of family life, there is little information in hand about this serious subject in our town. This research is regarding the status of sexual functioning disorders amongst postmenopausal women referring to health centers of Torbat Heydariyeh in 2016.Methods: the present study is a descriptive one which has been conducted in Torbat Heydariyeh. The community consisted of 200 of postmenopausal women referring to health and medical centers of in this city. Tools for the project included: a demographic features form and sexual functioning questionnaire in women (FSFI). The data were analyzed by SPSS software ver.18 and descriptive status.Results: The average total grade of sexual functioning was 22.53+/- 5.91 (in the domain of 14.40 to 35.60). Most of the units under study had a low result of (72.5%). Also amongst the 6 fields of sexual functioning, the highest disorder was of slipperiness (93.5%) and the least level of disorder was of satisfaction (72.5%).Conclusion: Sexual functioning of postmenopausal women in our town is at an undesirable level. It is recommended that further actions be taken in order to recognize the related factors and resolve the prevalent problems.

Background & Aim: Coronary artery disease is among the common diseases in societies. The best method of assessing coronary artery diseases is through angiography. This study aimed at investigating the effect of disease parameters on the diagnosis of coronary artery disease using artificial neural networks.Methods: This analytic study included a database of 200 non-attributable records. In this research, different neural networks such as MLP, LVQ and BR were used to predict whether the coronary arteries were blocked or not. In addition, the importance of the continuous risk factors of coronary artery disease was studied.Results: The most important criteria of the diagnosis systems are the specificity and sensitivity indicators. In this study, these two indicators were calculated in the test. The best accuracy was observed in MLP, with a back-error propagation of 88%. It was also observed that the removal of discrete parameters positively affects neural network convergence speed so that the prediction accuracy could reach 85%.Conclusion: Angiography is a high-cost invasive procedure with risk factors such as death, stroke and heart attack. Therefore, noninvasive methods should be applied in order to minimize error and maximize reliability to predict the disease. Using data mining methods can decrease the complications of the disease.

Background & Aim: Obesity and being overweight are among the most important health threats in the current century. Students are among the people who are at high risk of obesity. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the prevalence of obesity and overweight in students of Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2015.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 342 students living in the dormitory being selected through random cluster sampling. Data were collected using a researcher–made questionnaire, and height and weight measurements. For calculating obesity and overweight, the WHO criteria for body mass index (BMI) were used. Data were analyzed using SPSS 16.Results: The prevalence of obesity and overweight in study subjects were 1.5 % and 15.2%, respectively. There was a significant relationship between gender and body mass index status variables in students (p<0.001). Also, there was a significant difference between the indexes of overweight and smoking as well as between overweight and physical activity (P˂0.05).Conclusion: Prevalence of overweight and obesity among students of Tehran University of medical sciences is at a high level. Therefore, it is recommended to implement preventive programs complying with diet and the taking of regular physical activity is essential.

Background & Aim: Growth Chart is a clinical tool for assessing child's health and growth that can be affected by many factors including feeding method. The aim of this study was to compare growth parameters of breast-fed and bottle-fed infants and compare them with National Center for Health Statistics indices in 2016.Methods: This cross-sectional study conducted on 186 children below 6 months through random sampling in urban and rural health centers in Neyshapur in 2016. Data were collected by a checklist in which the demographic characteristics and data on weight, height and head circumference of infants were recorded. Data were analyzed using SPSS 20 at significance level of P<0.05.Results: There was a statistically significant difference between two groups of breast-fed and formula-fed infants at ages of two and six months, in terms of mean growth indices including weight, height and head circumference (p<0.05).The mean of weight gain index was higher in formula-fed infants than breast-fed ones. There was a significant difference between study infants (boys and girls) from birth to six months of age and similar cases in the NCHS standard curve in terms of mean weight, height and head circumference (p<0.05).Conclusion: It seems that the percentiles of height and weight of children below two years of age in Neyshabur are constantly under the percentiles of NCHS which highlights the necessity of providing and applying curves which are in accordance with regional conditions.

Background & Aim: Quality Anxiety and depression disorders have high rates of comorbidity.By emphasizing the central processes of psychopathology and targeting these common processes, unified transdiagnostic treatment can be very effective in the treatment of comorbidity. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the effect of Unified Transdiagnostic Treatment on Anxiety Disorders and Comorbid Depression.Methods: This is a single-case experimental study with multiple baseline design and different subjects that was conducted during 12 sessions on 3 patients at 6 weeks follow- up. Data were analyzed using visual inspection, improvement percentage and effect size methods. Instruments used in this research included the Structured Clinical Interview for Axis I disorders, beck anxiety inventory and 2nd edition of beck depression inventory.Results: The findings showed that the unified transdiagnostic treatment reduced the severity of anxiety and depression symptoms in the both post-treatment and follow-up stages so that percent of improvement for the first, second and third participants in the symptoms of anxiety was 61.64%, 51.42% and 52% and in the symptoms of depression was 47.36%, 51.51% and 60%, respectively.Conclusion: The present study targets the common emotional factors rather than specific symptoms of disorder through integrated protocol and provides further evidence for the dimensional approach of psychopathology. In this research, significant changes occurred in symptoms of the three patients and medical achievements were maintained during the follow-up.