مجله دانشکده پزشکی اصفهان
پیاپی 359 (هفته سوم دی ماه 1394)

Polysaccharide vaccines are effective in individuals from about the two years of age but, as they elicit T-cell independent immunity, they are not effective in younger children. In contrast, polysaccharide-protein conjugates are shown to be highly immunogenic in infants and induce T-cell dependent immunity. In this study, capsular polysaccharide of Neisseria meningitidis type A (NMA-CPS) was attached to recombinant protein of hepatitis B surface antigen (rHbsAg) covalently using amidation method. Immunization was done, choosing 2 groups of rabbits. Pure NMA-CPS and conjugated molecule were injected to groups 1 and 2, with a 15-day interval, intramuscularly. The bleeding was performed at days 0, 15, 30, 45 and titers of sera were measured via serum bactericidal assay. Polysaccharide bactericidal titer on days 15, 30 and 45 was almost identical and there was no increase in titer. But, in the first injection of the conjugate, the titer was much more (about twice of purified polysaccharide), and in the second injection, increased. Results display that conjugated molecules cause more immunity than pure capsular polysaccharide, and can stimulate cellular immunity.

We aimed to a new method to calculate the lane average width on the pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) images for lane detection and extraction problem. Although some studies are reported for lane detection based on vertical projection profile, they are not automatic with low error. Average width of lane is the most important parameter that is required for automatic image processing of PFGE images. This research with the aim of using the power spectrum density to calculate the lane average width was carried out. First, based on the power spectral density, PFGE images were processed. The proposed algorithm was trained using 10 PFGE images and then evaluated for 20 PFGE images which totally consisted of 300 lanes. These images were developed using Bio-Rad model of PFGE in Microbiology Laboratory of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Iran. The power spectrum density procedure in contrast to intersection of the horizontal lane yields decreased 99.61% of calculation error for lane detection. Considering the lane average width is used in several stages for lane detection and extraction procedure, it can be concluded that the power spectrum density improves the process of lane extraction significantly.

Extracted features from gene expression profiles of DNA microarrays are traditional tools in cancer classification. In this regard, using topological properties of genes through the gene network reconstruction can provide more reliable findings. The main goal of this article is the prediction of breast cancer recurrence via using topological features of the relevance network reconstructed from gene expression profiles. We utilized seven gene expression microarray datasets, including 1271 samples from seven studies on breast cancer. In this study, the relevance gene network was reconstructed and FDA (Fisher Discriminant Analysis) method was applied for gene selection based on the characteristics of the network topology. To construct the gene network, we needed a profile of expressions for each gene and it could not be obtained from a single sample. Therefore, to classify a test sample, this sample was added to the training data and new gene networks were reconstructed according to two groups of high- and low-risk samples. The correlation coefficient between topological quantity vectors of the networks before and after adding test sample was calculated. The test sample was classified to the group that corresponded to higher correlation between new reconstructed network and the primary labeled network. The classification accuracy was calculated using 5-fold cross-validation based on both correlation threshold and k-nearest neighbor (kNN) classifier and non-linear support vector machines (SVM) classifier that were applied on the topological properties of reconstructed gene networks. The results confirmed the advantage of applying topological features to the kNN and the non-linear SVM classifiers. The highest accuracy in prediction with the kNN classifier was obtained via degree centrality property that reached 98.5% in average among various numbers of genes. Topological features of reconstructed gene networks from gene expression profiles provided more stable and accurate results in prediction of breast cancer recurrence.

In recent years, the incidence of opportunistic fungal infections such as candidiasis, especially in immunocompromised patients, has considerably increased. Rapid and accurate identification of candida isolates is necessary for effective antifungal therapy and hospital infections management. In this study, polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based technique using a one-enzyme restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) was used for discrimination of candida species.

98 yeast strains were obtained from 90 patients with candidiasis during one-year period, from December 2013 to December 2014, in Birjand city, Iran. Clinical samples were cultured on Sabouraud dextrose agar with choramphenicol at 32°C and CHROMagar™ at 35°C for 48 hours to produce species-specific colors. In next stage, identification of Candida species was performed using PCR-RFLP method with the MspI restriction enzyme.

Totally, 98 candida isolates successfully were isolated from different clinical samples and identified via PCR-RFLP method using MspI. The age group of infancy to 10-year-old had the highest prevalence of candidiasis. In clinical samples, most of the Candida isolates were isolated from urine (83.86%). The most commonly identified species were Candida albicans in 41 cases (41.84%), Candida glabrata in 16 case (16.32%), Candida tropicalis in 12 cases (12.24%), Candida krusei in 10 cases (10.2%), Candida parapsilosis in 8 cases (8.08%), Candida Lusitania in 7 cases (7.14%), and Candida kefyr and Candida guilliermondii each one in 2 cases (2.04%).

PCR-RFLP assay with restriction enzyme MspI is an easy, rapid, and reliable method for identification of Candida species.

The most common primary tumors of the brain are gliomas. Despite improvements in treatment strategy, the prognosis for patients with high-grade gliomas has stayed poor, while it is relatively good for low-grade gliomas. The main and gold standard way for grading glial tumor is biopsy. Accurate assessment of tumor grade is vital for the determination of best treatment plan. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the role of diffusion tensor imaging (as a noninvasive method) using relative anisotropy (RA) in glial tumor grading. A total of 20 histologically confirmed gliomas patients were scanned using a 1.5-Tesla magnetic resonance scanner. We described two regions of interest (ROIs), white matter adjacent to the tumor and the homologous fiber tracts to first ROI in the contralateral hemisphere. The relative anisotropy values and ratio of the low-grade gliomas tended to be higher than those of the high-grade gliomas in the peritumoral fibers (P = 0.008, for RAt and P = 0.039 for RAt/n). Our findings prove that the relative anisotropy was different between low- and high-grade gliomas, which may be helpful in grading.

International studies show that every year, 2-7 new cases of primary nephrotic syndrome in every 100,000 children of under-16-year age occur and its prevalence is 15.7 per 100,0000 children. Nephrotic syndrome is diagnosed with high urinary protein excretion, low blood protein and high blood lipids.

This retrospective study was done to determine the incidence of complications related to nephrotic syndrome in children. All the children with nephrotic syndrome admitted in Imam HosseinPediatric Hospital, Isfahan, Iran, during 2013-2014, entered the study. Information such as age, sex, systolic and diastolic blood pressure (mmHg), length of hospitalization (day), number of relapses, albumin (g/dl), creatinine (g/dl), cholesterol (mg/dl), triglycerides (mg/dl) and urine protein levels (mg/24 hours) and glomerular filtration rate (GFR) (mg/minute) of the patient were collected from their last medical records.

The mean age of patients was 21.8 with a standard deviation of 8.3 years. The most frequent age was 5 years old. 39.3% of patients had increased systolic blood pressure and 36.4% of them had high diastolic blood pressure. In addition, 90.3% of patients had abnormal blood fat (triglycerides or cholesterol increase). 41.9% and 88.4% of patients had impaired albumin and glomerular filtration rates, respectively. 58.0% of patients had +++ proteinuria, as well as 20.2% of them had ++++ proteinuria.

Since the treatment and recovery of patients with nephrotic syndrome is very slow and time-dependent and there is not full recovery, we must recognize the symptoms and prevent progression to symptomatic treatment of the diseases; risk factors should be taken to avoid creating secondary problems, too.