Journal of Advanced Medical Sciences and Applied Technologies
Volume:2 Issue: 3, Sep 2016

The emerging concept of personalized Medicine or precision medicine has recently become more popular both among the health-care providers and patients. The focus of personalized medicine is to target prevention and treatment strategies based on patients’ variability in genotype, environment and lifestyle. Since precision medicine will make the clinical guidelines much more conditional and branched, It is expected that physicians would increasingly require informatics and algorithms supports to assist them with information management and evidence-based decision-making in medical contexts.

Executive functions refer to a group of higher-order cognitive processes responsible for self-regulated and targeted behaviors. This study aimed to investigate the effects of age and gender on executive functions focusing on three distinct areas of attentional control, planning and set-shifting among18-80 year-old healthy subjects. This cross-sectional study enrolled a total of 200 healthy adults (100 women and 100 men) 18-80 years of age living in Tehran. Sampling was done through a random stratified cluster procedure with regard to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Each area of the executive functions was evaluated using Stroop test for attentional control, Tower of London (ToL) test for planning and problem-solving and Wisconsin test for set-shifting. The correlation between age and components of executive functions was evaluated through Pearson correlation test. Moreover, the differences between age groups were examined by ANOVA while the correlation between gender and components of the executive functions was examined by t-test. Age was significantly correlated with all subscales of Stroop test except time-interference, with the total number of errors and the overall result from ToL and all subscales of Wisconsin (P<0.001), R=0.49). There were no gender effect on executive functions except for the total time (t=-2.09, p=0.037) and the number of errors (t=-9.2, p=0.004) in ToL test which was significantly higher in women than men.  The executive functions including attentional control, planning and set-shifting was shown to be decreased by age. Problem-solving and planning were better in men than women.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common cause of irreversible vision loss and debilitating disease in old age, which involves the central retina/macula among elderly patients. The genetic and environmental factors have important role in this multifactorial disease. Oxidative stress and DNA damages would have important impact on the onset and progression of AMD.  In this study, the possible association of c.-31A>G (rs3087404) polymorphism in the promoter region of SMUG1 gene with AMD disease was investigated. Fifty five AMD patients and 130 healthy age-, gender- and ethnicity-matched unrelated people as control group were genotyped by restriction fragment length polymorphism PCR (RFLP-PCR). Both groups were from Northwest of Iran (Tabriz).  Statistical analysis showed a significant association of AG genotype of this polymorphism with AMD. These results suggest a possible protective effect of this genotype for AMD disease (P=0.02, OR=0.574) among patients from Northwest of Iran. This genotype was observed more frequently in controls compared to the patients (59.23% v s 45.45%).

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a complex neurodegenerative disorder characterized by accumulation of extracellular amyloid-β plaques and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles tau protein. Obesity significantly increases the risk of developing AD. Leptin is a peptide hormone secreted by adipocytes. In the present study the serum levels of leptin in AD was evaluated. This study was performed on 12 Alzheimer patients referred to Zanjan Vali-e-Asr Hospital, and 12 healthy individuals. Serum levels of leptin were measured by ELISA method. Our results show that the level of leptin was significantly different in AD patients and control group. Considering the relationship between leptin levels and the age, oldest the patients, the lowest the levels of leptin hormone, in both male and female. Also, the severity of disease was related to the level of leptin hormone.   There presumably could be a cause and effect relationship between AD progress and reduction in the serum level of leptin. It may also point to the potential usage of measuring the leptin concentration in finding a biomarker for the disease.

The importance of education through interactive discussion-forums and seminars on family skills in coping with stress of having a child with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) seems to be under-attended. This prompted a local initiative entitled SMART (Shiraz Multidisciplinary Autism Research Team), to document the personal impact of autism on a preliminary group of parents and identify the corre lates of stress and emotional well-being of having a child with ASD. Seventeen parents (11 mothers and 6 fathers) from 17 families who had a child with ASD volunteered to take part in the study. Each partici pant completed the general health questionnaire (GHQ-28). They were invited to an interactive forum during the ‘Brain Awareness Week-2016’, where they engaged in discussions and small-group activities to share and rank their top-ten challenges with regard to emotional well -being and family functioning as well as rating their child’s autistic symptoms, including stereotyped behaviors. The practice was done through audience-response analysis and post-it note technique for individual counseling with interdisciplinary experts’ supervision.  Mothers had significantly higher scores than fathers on measures of stress and emotional well-being. Results identified that the poorer health was associated with more behavioral problems of the child. This narrow sample of Iranian parents showed to experience broadly similar responses to parents in other countries, which suggests that the impact of ASD may outweigh cultural disparities. Family counseling and education is planned to be strategized and attempted by SMART, based on the priority challenges documented in this sample group.

For years, the role of cerebellum was believed to be limited to motor functions. Only since almost two decades ago, a new concept about cerebellum and its contribution to non-motor functions including cognition and emotion started to emerged. During the recent years, numerous studies have focused on the cerebellar non-motor functions with their results providing supportive evidence on this view. The connections between cerebellum and cortical and subcortical areas such as frontoparietal cortices and the limbic system provide additional evidence for the involvement of cerebellum in higher cognitive functions. This review has been an effort to discuss the studies assessing different aspects of cognitive and affective disorders following cerebellar damage, as well as the cerebellar activity during cognitive tasks using novel approaches including fMRI and PET scans.

Over more than a century of research has demonstrated that sleep is necessary for the retention of memory. The current review aim to discuss the functional brain network connectivity is important during slow-wave sleep (SWS) for memory consolidation. While several evidences indicated the importance of SWS for memory consolidation but information to understand the main mechanisms of it are not enough.  Although there is the likely involvement of various factors in this phenomenon, we hypothesize the key role of Ih current arising memory consolidation during SWS by generation of neuronal oscillations. Finding the possible mechanism involving in this process may provide lights to suggesting new treatments against memory impairments.

Sleep deprivation (SD) is known to result in a range of neurological, cognitive and physical consequences in chronically-afflicted subjects. The respiratory nuclei of brain-stem tend to play a pivotal part in the regulating sleep function, hence hypothesized to be affected in various types of sleep-related dysfunctions. The purpose of this methodological report is to explain the techniques of REM sleep deprivation and stereology which can be used to consider changes of the quantitative properties of the respiratory nuclei in sleep-deprived rats.