فصلنامه آزمایشگاه و تشخیص
پیاپی 32 (تابستان 1395)

Various pathogenesis and daily increase in number of diabetic patients, emphasizes the necessity of finding new therapeutic methods. Nowadays, physicians focus on controlling the blood sugar, although the protections against diabetic complications like: retinopathy, nephropathy and neuropathy are being ignored. Many studies on diabetic patients show the risk of low level of vitamin B1 (thiamine) which is a cofactor of the majority of enzymes of the carbohydrates-metabolisms pathways with the help of magnesium. Today some of lipid-soluble thiamine derivatives such as benfotiamine function better than thiamine itself. Clinical Studies in Europe and America showed hopeful results of improving microvascular and macrovascular complications of diabetes. Therefore the aim of this study is to review the effectiveness of benfotiamine on lowering the secondary diabetes complications.
The study is done by searching the English and Persian databases like: Pubmed, Scopus, Proquest, Google scholar, SID, Magiran and Iranmedex with the terms: benfotiamine, thiamine, diabetes, retinopathy, neuropathy and nephropathy between the years 1954 till 2015. Among 80 related articles, 60 with the full text access were included.
Benfotiamine blocks many harmful hyperglycemia-pathway like: hexosamine pathway, AGE formation, PKC activation, NF-κB; though it increases the activation of transketolase enzyme. Thus benfotiamine is a good therapeutic option.
Due to prescribing benfotiamine as a cure for diabetes by European physicians for decades and its positive effects in the improvement of diabetes complications, so further studies by counting the Iranian life style and other elements like climate and genetics are recommended.

Mycotic keratitis is a potentially sight-threatening fungal infection of the cornea. Fungi have been found responsible for about 6% to 53% of cases of ulcerative keratitis. More than 70 species have been reported to cause mycotic keratitis. Dematiaceous fungi follow Fusarium and Aspergillus species among the most common etiologic agents. Mycotic keratitis cases have been reported from a worldwide distribution but are more common in tropical and subtropical climates. Keratitis due to the more common dematiaceous pathogens is low grade and slowly progressive compared with that caused by more aggressive organisms. The mycotic keratitis ulcer is slowly progressive compared with that seen in bacterial keratitis and normally involves the central cornea. The base of the ulcer is normally dry, with a gray or witish base, and its edges are raised and thickened. Linear infiltrates with a feathery texture may radiate from the ulcer edges, giving rise to satellite lesions. Ring infiltrates and hypopyon can also be seen. A macroscopic brown pigmentation of the corneal infiltrate has been seen in cases due to dematiaceous fungi. It is difficult to clinically distinguish between bacterial and fungal keratitis. For this reason and because of the potential for development of sight-threatening complications such as endophthalmitis, early diagnosis under the guidance of an ophthalmologist and prompt institution of therapy is essential. The best diagnostic approach is to obtain scrapings from the base and edges of the ulcer using a spatula or surgical blade for direct microscopic examination and culture. If inadequate material is obtained, a corneal biopsy can be sentfor histopathology and culture. The most frequently implicated dematiaceous agents of keratitis include Curvularia species, Alternaria species, Bipolaris species, and Botryodiplodia theobromae.

Secretion is an essential task for prokaryotic organisms to interact with their surrounding environment. In particular, the production of extracellular proteins and peptides is important for many aspects of an organism’s survival and adaptation to its ecological niche. In recent years, considerable progress has been made towards elucidating the structural and molecular mechanisms of the six secretion systems (types I–VI) of Gram-negative bacteria, the unique mycobacterial type VII secretion system, the General Secretory Pathways (Sec) and twin-arginine translocation (Tat). These advances have greatly enhanced our understanding of the complex mechanisms that these macromolecular structures use to deliver proteins and DNA into the extracellular environment or into target cells. In addition The rise of multidrug resistant bacteria is a major worldwide health concern. There is currently an unmet need for the development of new and selective antibacterial drugs. In this Review, we explore the structural and mechanistic relationships between these general, single- and double-membrane-embedded systems, and we briefly discuss how this knowledge can be exploited for the development of new antimicrobial strategies.

ER-alpha and ER-beta genes have been proven to play a significant role in breast cancer. Epidemiologic studies have revealed that age-incidence patterns of breast cancer in Middle East differ from those in the Western countries.
Two selected coding regions in the ER-β gene (exons 3 and 7) were scanned in Iranian women with breast cancer (150) and in healthy individuals (147). PCR single-strand conformation polymorphism was performed.
A site of silent single nucleotide polymorphism was found only on exon 7. The SNP was found only in breast cancer patients (5.7%) (χ2 = 17.122, P = 0.01). Codon 392 (C1176G) of allele 1 was found to have direct association with the occurrence of lymph node metastasis.
Our data suggest that ER-β polymorphism in exon 7 codon 392 (C1176G) is correlated with various aspects of breast cancer and lymph node metastasis in our group of patients.

Parvoviral infections are associated with a wide variety of diseases. Several members of the parvoviridae family have been shown to infect humans. In this review we discuss the pathogenesis of these infections and the spectrum of clinical diseases they are associated with. Their role in deregulation of erythrogenoid progenitors, as well as their possible role in the development of autoimmune disease and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is highlighted.

Confidentiality and privacy of all patients especially in HIV cases is a significant ethical concern of medical professionals. The main problem is, how we can protect the people who are in close contact with HIV cases at the same time not to breach the confidentiality of patients. In this article we have focused on ethical and legal aspect of confidentiality in HIV cases in IRAN and some view points of Islamic scholars. When HIV positive person disagrees to inform his or her partner, medical professionals should do their best to convince the patient to avoid high risk behaviors. In this conditions it is ethically unjustified for medical professionals to talk about the diagnosis. According to regulations in IRAN health system plays a pivotal role to gather data about HIV infected person and should suggest ways to prevent transmission of the virus in acceptable and ethical manner.