Koomesh
Year:2009 | Volume:10 | Issue:3 (31)|Papers Count:13

Introduction: Postural control deficits after lateral ankle sprain have been shown in patients with functional ankle instability (FAI). Numerous researchers have shown different effects of orthosis on postural control in FAI patients. It seems that the condition of chosen control group might explain the different results obtained from those studies. To the authors' knowledge, no study has compared the effect of orthosis on postural control against different control conditions.Materials and Methods: Twenty patients with functional instability of ankle and twenty were matched healthy subjects participated in the study. Postural control in single limb stance was assessed for both affected and unaffected foot while using soft and semi-rigid orthosis. Standing without using orthosis was considered as the baseline condition. Balance control was evaluated by force platform. Results: Our results showed that interaction between group and orthosis was significant for all of the parameters extracted from center of pressure (COP) data, meaning that orthosis has a differential effect on postural control between the two groups. Also, interaction between foot side and orthosis was not significant for all of the COP parameters. In another words, orthosis has the same effect on involved and uninvolved foot side.Conclusion: Although orthosis improved postural stability in patients with FAI, it showed no such an effect in healthy subjects. As the other finding, it was demonstrated that orthosis has no differential effect on postural control between involved and uninvolved foot side in both groups. Therefore, the positive effects of orthosis on postural control in FAI patients may be revealed when healthy subjects are involved as control group in research design.

Introduction: Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are pluripotent cells derived from the inner cell mass (ICM) of blastocysts. A feeder layer and cytokines are necessary for culture of these embryonic cells in most species. The aim of this study was application of rat mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) as a feeder layer for the isolation and culture of mouse embryonic stem cells.Materials and Methods: Mesenchymal stem cells were isolated from rat bone marrow and cultured in DMEM (Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium) medium supplemented with 10% FBS (fetal bovine serum). To verify the isolated cells, they were affected by osteocyte differentiation inducer to become bone mass. After twenty-one days, the differentiation was evaluated by Alizarin red staining. Blastocysts were obtained from Balb/c pregnant mice and cultured on this MSCs feeder layer. Two days later; after hatching of blastocysts, the cells were trypsinized and the inner cell mass dissociated to the small cell clumps. These clumps were cultured on 12-well plates covered by the same MSCs without applying any cytokines or growth inducer. Two to three days after the passage, colonies appeared which were similar to embryonic stem cell colonies in morphology. These colonies were passaged two more times using the mentioned procedure and their identities were examined by morphological observation and alkalin phosphatase staining. Results: In this study we could easily cultured MSCs using DMEM media. The mesenchimic origin of cultured cells, which showed fibroblastic morphology, was proved by differentiation to bone masses using osteocyte inducer and detection with Alizarin red. By applying DMEM media and MSCs cells, as feeder layer, we could culture ESC without any need to cytokines or growth factors. After passage to the inner cell mass colonies were formed. These colonies were formed in two more other passages. The colonies were verified with alkalin phosphatase assay. Conclusion: Results of this study showed mesenchymal stem cells isolated from rat bone marrow can differentiate to osteoblaste line and can be used as feeder layer for isolation, culture and forming embryonic stem cells colonies. This method, by using MSCs as feeder layer and bypassing the need of cytokine and growth factors, seems to be a simple efficient method for culture and isolation of embryonic stem cells.

Introduction: Half a million of newborns are annually born with neural tube defect around the world. Folic acid intake prevents neural tube defects in newborns significantly. Therefore, this study was performed to determine the pattern of folic acid intake during pregnancy.Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytic study was performed using questionnaire and interview. Three hundred and twenty-two women who had terminated their pregnancies at Fatemieh hospital were participated in the study.Results: The results showed that 81.4% of women had used folic acid during pregnancy. 23.9% of women took it from the first month of pregnancy and 16.4% after the third month. Most of women had taken it for more than three months. The lack of knowledge about Folic acid necessity (73.3%) was the main reason for the women who had not taken folic acid during pregnancy. Folic acid intake during pregnancy was significantly associated with education (P=0.004), employment (P=0.052), parity (P=0.000), the number of abortions (P=0.046), the number of newborns with neural tube defects (P=0.034). Also, there was a significant relationship between the use of folic acid during pregnancy and planned pregnancies (P=0.006) and also prenatal care (P=0.047).Conclusion: Although most of women had taken folic acid during pregnancy, the time of initiation was not right. Therefore, it seems that it is necessary to educate women about folic acid advantages and its usage.

Introduction: Leishmaniasis is a parasitological disease, which is common between human and animals. This disease cause always serious health problems for the human communities. This disease is prevalent in many parts of the world. Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is a prevalent parasitological disease with diverse clinical manifestations in Iran. It is an important health problem in many parts of Iran as well and its incidence has doubled over the last decade. This study was designed to determine the epidemiology of CL in Kashan during 2007- 2008.Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional study in which 5098 persons were randomly selected in thirteen rural and urban districts of Kashan. The disease was diagnosed based on clinical examination and microscopic observation of the parasite in the ulcer site. The patient's information such as age, sex, job, number and sites of ulcer(s) or scar(s), date and place of the ulcer, and results of clinical examination and laboratory tests were recorded. Data analysis was performed using statistical Ki-square test.Results: The prevalence rate of disease in 5089 inhabitants studied was 6.4%. One hundred and three persons (2%) had active ulcers and 223 persons (4.4%) had scar. Fifty three out of 200(26.5%) infected male suffering from CL, and fifty out of 126 (39.7%) infected female had active ulcer (P=0.013) The highest frequency and the least infected age groups were observed in 20-29 years old patients with a rate of 23.3% and 0-9 years old with the rate of 7.8%, respectively. 49.5% of the infected cases were under 30 years old. 64.1% of the patients had one and 35.9% had two or more ulcers. The most common location of ulcers were on hands (46.6%) and then on feet, on face and on the other parts of the body. 75.8% of the patients were infected in Kashan city. The estimated rate for CL incidence was approximately 37.6 cases in 100000 people in Kashan during 2007-2008.Conclusion: The prevalence and incidence rate of CL are higher than expected rate in Kashan city. Such a high prevalence and incident rate is alarming and require control and prevention measures. Further epidemiological investigations of disease particularly CL are suggested.

Background: In the diagnosis medical labs, it is very important to evaluate the precision of micropipettes in transferring small amounts of liquids. The medical tests will not result accurately, if the liquid volume doesn’t transfer exactly by micropipettes. Thus the doctor faces sort of problems in the disease diagnosis and its control. In the standard CLSI EP5, there is a method to specify and assess the precision of micropipettes, by using CV (coefficients of variation). Also there are other methods to estimate and test the mention CV theory, in the formal statistic texts which could be used to assess the micropipettes precision. It is the main goal of this research to study the precision of lab micropipettes which are shown by A and B and compared by reference standard value from ISO 8655.Material and Methods: In this research we evaluate the precision of the lab micropipettes. Two brands A and B are assigned to measure the distilled water mass by using the accurate scale which is accurate up to 10-6 to measure 50 gram weight. The experimental environment is a metrology lab which is confirmed by Iran Standard and Industrial Researches. A unique technician sampled in the beginning of the work time and after 2 hours repeated the sampling. Totally, each micropipette is used to measure 40 times with 10 times repeat for single measurement in 28 work days. It is used common statistical methods to estimate and test the coefficients of variation theory.Results: Point estimation of CV for micropipettes A and B were 0.50% and 0.64% respectively. Also the 95% confidence upper bounds for these two micropipettes by using likelihood ratio method were 0.53% and 0.64% respectively. The micropipette A confirmed the ISO 8655, but the micropipette B did not. Measurement error in micropipette B was 30% less than micropipette A in average. Conclusion: By using the approach of CLS EP5 and confidence interval for CV, precision of two micropipettes were compared. Only one of them confirmed the ISO 8655, but the other one was failed.

Introduction: Gonorrhea is a worldwide sexually transmitted disease, which is caused by Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Since there are no adequate laboratory reports about the frequency of this disease, we decided to estimate the infected male known to have gonorrhea and its frequency in different age groups in Mashhad (Iran).Material and Methods: 1384 urethral discharge samples were collected between 2003 and 2004.Two swabs were taken for sampling from urethral discharge. One swab was used for obtaining smears for gram and methylenblue staining and the second one was used for culture on Thayer-Martin agar medium. Colony morphology, gram staining, oxidase and catalase tests, and sugar fermentation test confirmed the identity of the organism.Results: From 1348 samples, 80 were diagnosed positive using direct smears, meanwhile 71 (88/75%) of these samples were positive for Neisseria gonorrhoeae culture as well. The most frequency of N.gonorrhoeae infection was respectively observed in 47-56 and 16-27 age groups.Conclusion: The results showed that the age of patients infected with N.gonorrhoeae are higher with compared to observed in similar studies in western and even Asian countries that indicates the influence of health education in the reduction of infection among the youth population.

Introduction: Malnutrition is a common problem in maintenance hemodialysis patients and is associated with increased mortality and morbidity. This study was carried out to determine the effects of dialysis frequency on nutritional markers hemodialysis patients in Kashan(Iran). Materials and Methods: This before and after clinical trials was carried out on 18 hemodialysis patients (12 female, 6 male). In this study, the standard hemodialysis regime of patients, which it was3 times per week and 4 hours per session, were changed to 4 times per week for a period of 30 days. All Anthropometry and nutritional markers data were collected during 30 days and statistically analyzed with paired t-test and Pearson correlation coefficient. P value less than 0.05(P<0.05) was considered significant in all tests.Results: Weight and BMI of patients increased from 68.3±13.9 kg, 28.4±7.1 to 68.9±13.8 kg, 28.6±7 respectively (P<0.05). In addition, serum albumin levels of the patients showed an increase from 3.7±0.2 to 4±0.3 g/dl (P<0.05).Conclusion: These results showed that the increasing the number of dialysis times improve nutritional status in hemodialysis patients.

Introduction: Each year over 200 million pregnancies occurring in worldwide and approximately one third of these are unintended. The present study was conducted to assess the prevalence of unintended pregnancies and its related factors in Arak (Iran).Material and methods: This analytical cross- sectional study was carried out on 352 mothers who had 6-12 months neonatal. Data was collected by valid and reliable questionnaire and interview in the health centers of Arak city. The prevalence of unintended pregnancy was calculated and its related factors identified by fisher exact test, t-test, and Chi-square and logistic regression statistical tests. Results: In this study, the prevalence of unintended pregnancy was 27.8%. Meanwhile 6.1% of these mothers had used interrupts coitus as a contraceptive. A significant relation was observed between unwanted pregnancy and age of parents, parity and husband education (P<0.05), but there was no significant association between unintended pregnancy and mother’s occupation and education (P>0.05). There was a reverse association between unintended pregnancy and prenatal care and exclusive breastfeeding as well.Conclusion: These results showed that extending of the education programs about contraceptive methods and disadvantages of unintended pregnancy especially for housewife and illiterate women is necessary in order to preventing unintended pregnancies its sequential outcomes.

Introduction: Previous studies have shown that different mechanisms are involved in neuropathic pain. Increasing nitric oxide (NO) in the location of injury may be an effective factor in neuropathic pain which, in turn, acts through increasing membrane permeability. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of aminoguanidin, a specific inhibitor of inducible nitric oxide synthetase (iNOS) on neuropathic pain behaviors.Materials and Methods: Male Wistar rats (200-300 gram) were used. Chronic constriction injury (CCI) in the rats were produced by four loosely ligation that the distance between them is 1 millimeter before the triple branching of sciatic nerve. Two weeks later, the animals were tested for thermal hyperalgesia and mechanical allodynia. Aminoguanidine were injected (I.P) 60 min before test in doses of 75, 150 and 300 mg/kg.Results: Our studies showed CCI induced neuropathic pain in all rats. All doses of aminoguanidin (75, 150, 300 mg/kg) significantly reduced mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia in compared with CCI group. Moreover, the effect of aminoguanidin on thermal hyperalgesia at dose of 300 mg/kg was significantly higher than two lower doses. Conclusion: According to findings of this and other studies, aminoguanidin has an important influence in reducing neuropathic pain. This effect, at least in part, is mediated through inhibition of iNOS. Additionally, an inhibition of di-aminoxidase or anti oxidative effects may be contributed to inhibitory effects of aminoguanidin on neuropathic pain. Thus, further investigations can determine the mechanism of aminoguanidin effects in neuropathic Pain. Findings of this study open a new window for synthesis of new drugs for management of neuropathic pain in clinic.

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus is accompanied with higher incidence of cardiovascular disorders. There is some evidence on antidiabetic potential of Allium ascalonicum L. (AA). Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the beneficial effect of oral two-month administration of AA on contractile reactivity of isolated thoracic aorta from diabetic rats.Materials and Methods: Male Wistar rats were divided into control, AA-treated control, diabetic, and AA-treated diabetic groups. For induction of diabetes, streptozotcin (STZ) was intraperitoneally administered (60 mg/Kg). Meanwhile, treated groups received AA mixed with standard pelleted food at a weight ratio of 6.25% for 2 months. Serum glucose level was measured in weeks 4 and 8. Also after 2 months contractile reactivity of thoracic aortic rings to KCl and noradrenaline was determined using isolated tissue setup.Results: Serum glucose level showed a significant increase in diabetic animals (p<0.001) and this was significantly attenuated in AA-treated diabetic group (p<0.005). In addition, AA-treated diabetic group showed a lower contraction to KCl and noreadrenaline (p<0.05) as compared to diabetic group. Meanwhile, there was no significant difference between control and AA-treated control groups regarding contractile reactivity.Conclusion: Oral administration of AA for 2 months could improve hyperglycemia and also attenuate the contractile responsiveness of the vascular system and this may prevent the development of hypertension in diabetic rats.

Introduction: In recent century, the rapid growth of population threats life. This shows the necessity of using contraception methods. In most women who use hormonal methods as acontraceptive method, uterine bleeding occurs and it result in that they stop using the methods and therefore leads to unwanted pregnancies. In this study, we investigated the incidence of Abnormal uterine bleeding (AUB) in the different kinds of hormonal methods.Material and Methods: This study was performed on 390 married women with normal menstruation and in age of 15-35 years who referred to Semnan health centers. They had used one of the hormonal methods at least more than one month. 130 women used DMPA, 130 women used minipill and 130 persons used LD tablets. All women who had AUB following using one of the hormonal methods were considered as AUB due to the hormonal method, excepet those had AUB for another reason that it was proved by sonography or other investigations. Patients’ information were exactly recorded in questionnaires.Results: The incidence of metrorrahgia in minipill and DMPA was more than its incidence for LD method and the incidence of oligomenorrhea in DMPA method was more than minipill and LD method. In addition, the incidence of amenorrhea in DMPA method was more than minipill. The period of using of these methods had reverse effect on the incidence of oligomenorrhea, polymenorrhea and menorrahgia but it had a direct effect on the incidence of amenorrhea. The incidence of menorrahgia in the 15-20 years old persons was more than other ages. Conclusion: The incidence of AUB in LD method is very low and seems it might be the most suitable hormonal contraceptive method, in case women aren't prohibited from using LD tablet. Regarding the high incidence of abnormal bleeding in minipill method, using another method instead of minipill method for contraception is recomened to women.

Behcet disease (BD) is a multisystem vasculitic syndrome with clinical triad of oral aphthus ulcer, genital ulcer, and eye involvement. Uveitis of BD may be particularly resistant to corticosteroids and immunosuppressants with a rapid progression to loss of vision in 10-25% of the cases. In recent years, Infliximab is a very useful drug for refractory eye involvement of BD and some studies recommend Cellcept for this reason.Here, we reported a 40 years old man with known BD, referred to our Clinic with severe bilateral panuveitis. His eye involvement was refractory to conventional therapy in 15 months follow-up; then he was switched to Infliximab, in an attempt to control his disease. Infliximab (3mg/kg) was given at 0, 4, 8 weeks (three doses) together with Azathioprin. Very soon after the first infusion, we have found a remarkable ophthalmologic response. We have prescribed Cellcept after the third infusion and discontinued Azathioprin and Infliximab.14 months after the last infusion, no significant changes were found in ophthalmologic examination. Our observation highlights a difference in the effect of Cellcept in panuveitis of BD.