Journal of Isfahan Medical School
Year:2012 | Volume:29 | Issue:167|Papers Count:13

Background: Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative disease caused by free radicals and oxidative stress. On the other hand, antioxidant agents can affect the consolidation of memory and thus control of Alzheimer's disease. It was indicated that red grape juice contains antioxidant agents. In this study, the effects of red grape juice on speed of learning and consolidation of memory in rats with Alzheimer's were studied.Methods: Alzheimer's was induced by bilateral infusion of streptozotocin (STZ) into the lateral ventricles of brains of male rats. The rats drank 10% red grape juice during 21 days. A passive avoidance learning test was used for measuring memory and learning in rats. Delay in entering the dark room is the most important parameter in avoidance learning test for measurement of memory and learning.Findings: Our results showed that memory and learning in STZ-group decreased significantly compared to the sham group. In contrast, red grape juice intake increased the speed of learning and improvement of memory in rats with Alzheimer' s.Conclusion: Similar to other studies, our results indicated that red grape juice can reverse memory deficits caused by STZ.

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is one of the most common neurologic diseases and an important cause of disability in young adults. In addition to many neurologic and somatic signs and symptoms, MS has many neuropsychological effects. Cognitive dysfunction is very common in patients with MS and is one of the major factors of disability in these patients. The present study aimed to determine the frequency of cognitive dysfunction in MS patients with mild physical disability.Methods: This study was performed on 101 patients with mild MS (EDSS score<4) during 3 months. The collected data by short portable mental status questionnaire, Beck depression scale and a demographic questionnaire was analyzed by SPSS. Moreover, no relations were found between cognitive disorders and age and duration of the disease.Findings: The mean age was 32.5±8 years. Overall, 26.7% of the participants were male and 73.3% were female. Based on Beck's scale, depression was found in 49.5% of patients. In addition, 11% of patients showed cognitive disorders.Conclusion: Based on our results, MS and cognitive disorders are more common in females. Although relative frequency of cognitive disorders was 11% in this study, it was reported as 54-65% in other researches. It is important to emphasize that during the progression of somatic and neurologic signs and symptoms, the frequency of cognitive disorders is also increased. Therefore, evaluating patients for cognitive disorders in the early stages of the disease seems necessary.

Background: Epicedial fat tissue is known as a risk factor in cardiovascular diseases. This study was designed to compare the epicedial fat thickness in patients with cardiovascular diseases and normal patients. It also tried to find a correlation between epicedial fat thickness and severity of coronary stenosis.Methods: This study was conducted from September 2010 to April 2011 at two university hospitals (Noor and Chamran Referral centers) associated to Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.A total number of 196 subjects were allocate to three groups of control (n=68), acute coronary syndrome (n=64) and chronic stable angina (n=64). After registering demographic data, all individuals underwent echocardiography in diastolic subcostal view to determine the epicedial fat thickness.Angiography was also conducted to assess the severity of coronary stenosis. The thickness of epicedial fat was compared between groups and its correlations with age, sex, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, waist circumference, body mass index and severity of coronary stenosis were evaluated.Findings: The mean age of participants was 59.54±11.01 years. There were statistical differences between age, sex, smoking and severity of coronary stenosis (P<0.001, P=0.03, P=0.04, and P<0.001, respectively). The mean of epicedial fat thickness in acute coronary syndrome, chronic stable angina and control groups were 5.7±2.1, 6.2±2.0 and 4.6±1.9 mm (P<0.001). There were no independent correlation between predicting factors and epicedial fat thickness (P>0.05).Conclusion: This study indicated the thickness of epicedial fat to be more in cardiovascular diseases compared with normal persons. Future studies for evaluating the sensitivity and specificity of this diagnostic method are warranted.

Background: Reproductive needs and preferences of HIV positive individuals are changing due to the development of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV infection. As a result of improvements of symptoms and changes in quality of life, people who live with HIV infection (PLWHIV) regain their normal activities and new challenges and new opportunities are arising. Many PLWHIV continue to be sexually active and some have strong desires for biological children which entails unprotected sexual intercourse. The objective of this study was to determine fertility intentions and factors influencing them among the population living with HIV infection that referred to the behavioral clinics of universities of medical science in Tehran, Iran.Methods: A cross-sectional interview-based survey on 400 people living with HIV with consequential sampling was carried out.Findings: The majority of participants (60%) were male. Most men (44.2%) and women (51.3%) were in the age group of 34-25 years. In addition, 34% of female and 44.2% of male HIV positive patients desired to have children. Bivariant analysis revealed factors related with desire to have children as being male, being married, not having a living child, and having an HIV positive child (P<0.05). Based on logistic regression model, factors strongly associated with the desire to have children included young age, being married, having an HIV positive child, and having a living child (P<0.05).Conclusion: Our results highlighted the importance of developing reproductive health service policies and interventions for women and men living with HIV. Service providers need adequate counseling training to manage issues related with reproductive health services (RHS). A better integration of HIV care programs into RHS settings is needed to improve effective service provision.

Background: The present study was conducted to evaluate the relative frequency of Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) in patients at a university hospital, Isfahan, Iran.Methods: This descriptive, analytic study was conducted on 162 patients hospitalized in various wards of Alzahra Hospital (an 800-bed teaching hospital) of Isfahan during October 2009 to March 2010. Fecal samples of patients who suffered from diarrhea after receiving antibiotics were collected.Microbial analysis was performed to determine the existence of C. difficile. C. difficile toxins (A and B) were detected by ELISA method. The obtained data was statistically analyzed using chi-square test in SPSS at a significance level of P<0.05.Findings: C. difficile toxins were detected in 36 (22.2%) patients. The frequency of toxins occurrence was significantly higher in men (P£0.005). In addition, a large number of individuals infected by C.difficile toxins were children under 4 years of age. Ceftriaxone caused many cases of diarrhea in our studied population.Conclusion: In general, based on our results, wrong prescription and antibiotics abuse can cause infection with C. difficile in patients receiving antibiotics. Therefore, the physicians must pay more attention to the recovery of patients with antibiotics.

Background: Candidemia is a very important infection in terms of incidence and mortality. It can be caused by several species of the genus Candida and should be diagnosed and treated quickly. Although Candida albicans is still the most common causative agent of candidemia, the incidence of blood infections due to non-albicans Candida species has increased in the recent years. Species identification of the agents is necessary from the viewpoints of continuous epidemiological survey and susceptibility or resistance of different species to the antifungal drugs.Methods: In this study, forty eight clinical isolates of Candida species obtained from blood specimen cultures belonging to 32 immunocompromised patients with candidemia who were hospitalized in some therapeutic centers in Tehran, Iran, were precisely identified at the species level by a set of PCR-RFLP assays.Findings: C. parapsilosis was the most frequent agent of candidemia followed by C. glabrata, C.albicans, C. tropicalis and C. kefyr. These findings were unexpected and should be specifically mentioned because C. albicans is almost always the most common cause of candidemia and all other clinical forms of candidiasis, while among the isolates of the current study it only ranked third in terms of abundance.Conclusion: We found that C. parapsilosis as the most common causative agent of candidemia in our samples. Considering the relatively low number of studied isolates, it seems that a larger study is needed to confirm these results.

Background: Positron emission tomography (PET) scan is a non-invasive, complicated and expensive medical imaging technology used for diagnosis and treatment of various diseases including cancers.This study aimed to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of this technology.Methods: The major medical electronic databases including Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, MEDLINE and IranMedex were searched. The studies that compared PET-scan with other diagnostic methods in terms of sensitivity, specificity and safety were considered in this review.Findings: PET-scan has been found to be a non-invasive and safe procedure for diagnosing metastatic NSCLC with a sensitivity and specificity of 74-95% and 81-97%, respectively. On the other hand, the sensitivity and specificity of computed tomography (CT) scan have been reported as 60-67% and 73-77%, respectively. The corresponding values for mediastinoscopy have been 78% and 100%. In lymphoma, the specificity and sensitivity of PET-scan (90% and 79-100%, respectively) have been higher than those of gamma scan. Although PET-scan is not an appropriate method for screening and diagnosis of cancer, it can contribute to staging and follow-up processes in cases of NSCLC and lymphoma. This technology adds 0.046 years (about 17 days) to the patient's life.Conclusion: PET-scan is a safe technology that has better diagnostic performance in comparison with similar technologies. The application of this method in staging and follow-up of NSCLC and lymphoma can prevent unnecessary surgeries and add a few years to the lives of patients.

Background: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of heavy resistance exercise on the circadian rhythm of salivary cortisol in male body building athletes.Methods: In this balanced, crossover study, 15 healthy resistance-trained men (mean age, weight and height: 21.45±1.10 years, 76.50±4.20 kg, and 178.30±3.60 cm, respectively) with three years of previous experience in resistance exercise were selected. At the time of study, the subjects were involved in a resistance training program of at least three sessions per week. The testing period included two test days per week, incorporating a total of two days of "rest" and two days of "exercise".Subjects were randomly selected to participate on the "rest" and "exercise" days. The heavy resistance exercise protocol consisted of three, ten-repetition sets using 75% of one repetition maximum (1RM).Saliva samples were obtained every two hours for a maximum of 16 hours during each testing day.The repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was followed by post-hoc LSD test. The significance level was considered as P£0.05.Findings: There was a significant increase in the level of salivary cortisol immediately after the heavy resistance exercise session (P£0.05). There were no significant differences between the exercise and control days in circadian rhythm of salivary cortisol (P³0.05).Conclusion: This study showed that heavy resistance exercise had a significant effect on cortisol release immediately post exercise, but did not significantly affect the waking circadian rhythm in male body building athletes

Background: The increasing number of people referring to family therapy centers and higher rate of divorce are both signs of a serious crisis in family function. The aim of this study was to determine the association between marital conflicts and interpersonal cognitive distortion, dysfunctional attitude, and relationship-specific irrational beliefs.Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive research, 60 married people, who had referred to Family therapy centers in Isfahan, Iran, during March 2010 to September 2010, were selected. Four questionnaires including relationship-specific irrational beliefs questionnaire (RSIBQ), interpersonal cognitive distortion scale (ICDS), dysfunctional attitude scale (DAS-26), marital conflicts questionnaire (MCQ) were completed. Data was analyzed by Pearson correlation and stepwise regression analysis in SPSS16.Findings: The mean age of men and women were 37.6±9 years and 32.6±7.7, respectively. Data analysis revealed significant relationships between marital conflicts and interpersonal cognitive distortion, dysfunctional attitude, and relationship-specific irrational beliefs (P<0.01). Linear regression analysis showed dysfunctional attitude scores, age and gender to be able to predict marital conflicts scores.Conclusion: The results of this study support the cognitive model to explain psychopathology of family relationship. In addition, these findings can be an evidence for codification of treatment protocols based on three elements which were proved to be related with marital conflicts in this study.

Background: Considering the high prevalence of congenital hypothyroidism (CH) in Iran and particularly Isfahan, Iran, and according to the findings of CH screening program which was implemented during recent years and lack of studies evaluating the treatment outcome of diagnosed patients, the aim of this study was to descriptively evaluate the growth status of children with CH.Methods: In this prospective cohort study, 760 CH neonates who were diagnosed and followed up during CH screening program (2002-9) in Isfahan were enrolled. They were selected by convenient sampling method. Height, weight, head circumferences and body mass index (BMI) of the studied patients were measured. In addition, the 3rd, 15th, 50th, 85th and 97th percentiles of the studied variables according to sex and age groups were determined and descriptively compared with corresponding values suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO).Findings: The percentiles of weight, height and head circumferences of the studied children with CH were significantly different from the WHO values. The observed differences were less significant in higher percentiles. The differences reduced during the follow-up and they were lower in older ages.Conclusion: The findings of this study indicated that proper treatment of neonates with CH would improve the growth delay of patients during follow-up. However, normal growth of head circumference would be achieved earlier than weight.