فصلنامه کومش
سال بیست و دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 77، زمستان 1398)

The present study was conducted with the aim of analyzing the bibliometrics of Koomesh, as one of the oldest and most reputable Iranian medical journals.

This study was conducted using a bibliometric method on the articles published in Koomesh during the years 2006-2017. For this purpose, through advanced search in the Scopus database, 764 papers were extracted and bibliometric and Visualization analysis was carried out using Excel and VOSviewer software.

The publication process of articles and citations received by Koomesh is ascending. The number of articles reached from 14 to 100 articles in 2017 and the number of citations reached from zero citations in 2006 to 289 citations in 2017. The co-authorship map of the journal’s authors showed that Raheb Ghorbani, with 88 articles and 27 links, was the most active author and had the most co-authorship. Considerably, evaluation of organizational affiliation and contributing countries in the journal articles indicated that Semnan University of Medical Sciences was ranked first with 310 organizational affiliations and authors from nine countries participated in the articles received by the journal. According to the co-occurrence map of all 5424 keywords in the articles published in Koomesh, 127 keywords, which were the most frequent keywords in three clusters, had the frequency of 10 and more than 10. The article by Abdolreza Raja'i Fard, Abolfazl Mohammadbeygi and Narges Mohammad Salehi, "Estimation of natural age of menopause in Iranian women: A meta-analysis study" with 20 citations was the most cited article of Komosh in Scopus database.

This study presents a general perspective on Koomesh performance during the years 2006-2017. The findings of this study can serve as a roadmap to journalists and assist them in continuing their way.

Early detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD), as a neurodegenerative disease and the most common cause of dementia in the elderly people, using gait analysis have been particularly noted by researcher in recent years. Because this novel method is non-invasive, less cost, and feasible in non-clinical and laboratory environments. Therefore, in this Meta-Analysis review article, detection of AD using gait analysis based on information technology tools surveyed in previous studies.

The search for previous articles was done in databases such as Google Scholar, Pubmed, IEEE, Springer, and Elsevier. After finding articles in these databases, appropriate articles were selected to survey based on criteria such as focusing of the study on elderly patients with AD or mild cognitive impairment, the detection and assessment of AD, and the use of sensor technology to record gait.

AD can be detected, even in the early stages and also at a stage of mild cognitive impairment based on gait analysis using new technologies with sensors and information technologies. Also, it is possible to quantitatively evaluate and more accurately detect the disease based on the combination of different sensor technologies and the use of artificial intelligence techniques.

Although gait analysis can be a novel tool for early detection of AD, but it is essential to be developed and improved based on sensors and artificial intelligence in order to be used as a reliable clinical tools.

Influenza is an infectious and severe respiratory disease. It is one of the major problems of public health. In order to determine the spatial distribution and areas with over-expected of a disease including influenza, it can be effective in identifying environmental hazards and fair distribution of health services. In this study, the geographical distribution of the influenza and the identification of the high risk clusters of this disease were investigated.

In this study, the incidence information of influenza in a 21-month period (until October 2018) from eastern Mediterranean countries were used. The data were extracted from the world health organization's reports and used to determine the areas with over-expected incidence of influenza using flexible scan statistics.

In total, 28055 cases of influenza have been reported in the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean region during the study period. Results detected four high-risk cluster in this region. According to the results, incidence of influenza in Bahrain, Kuwait and the Qatar was significantly higher than expected. In the second place, Oman and Tunisia were also considered as a high-risk region, separately. Jordan was the next cluster, however there was no statistically significant difference between expected and observed cases of influenza in this cluster.

The results of flexible spatial exploration statistics indicated the high incidence of influenza in the countries of west of Asia and north of Africa in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Therefore, the influenza control system at the regional and national levels in high-risk countries is strongly recommended

Premenstrual syndrome refers to the presence of cyclic behavioral and physical symptoms that affects some women. Finding an effective and safe way to treat premenstrual syndrome has always been a serious concern. More than 95% of the young and middle-aged women are affected, and in 2-10% are severe enough to affect their lifestyle and occupation. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of Nigella sativa seeds on the severity of symptoms of premenstrual syndrome.

This double blind randomized clinical trial study, performed on 84 students with symptoms of premenstrual syndrome residing in girls' dormitories in Mashhad (Iran) University of Medical Sciences in 2017. They were randomly divided into two groups of case and control. Data collection tool was COPE form. Correspondingly, the severity of the symptoms was compared one and two months after the intervention by before intervention and the control group. The intervention group recived oral capsule containing 500 mg of Nigella sativa seeds and the control group received placebo capsule, three times a day from 7 days before the onset of menstrual bleeding to the first 3 days of menstrual bleeding for 2 cycles.

The overall severity of premenstrual syndrome symptoms had a significant reduction in the intervention group than the control group at the end of the first and second months after using Nigella sativa seeds Capsule(P<0.001).

The results of this study indicated that the Nigella sativa seeds reduces the severity of symptoms of premenstrual syndrome, so it can be used to treat this common problem

A wide range of intensive care patients are constipated. It seems that dried plum is effective in acute constipation. Thus, the present study aimed to compare the effect of dried plums (prunes) with magnesium hydroxide on the constipation management of cerebrovascular accident patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit.

This randomized controlled clinical trial has been performed on 24 patients with stroke admitted to the intensive care unit, suffering from constipation. In this way, for two days and twice each day by gavage, the interventional and control groups received 50 gr of dried plums in the form of syrup and 30 ml of magnesium hydroxide, respectively. Frequency of bowel movements and stool consistency of patients in both groups were recorded, and the Bristol stool scale was used to describe the stool consistency.

The mean and the standard deviation values of bowel movement in intervention and control groups were evaluated 0.281±0.56 and 0.309±0.22, respectively. The frequency stool consistency of normal in intervention group was %72.72 and in control group was %54.54. The comparison between the intervention and control groups demonstrated that there was not a significant variation in frequency of bowel movement and stool consistency.

Results showed that plum is effective in increasing the number of bowel movement and stool consistency of stroke patients admitted to the intensive care unit, but no significant difference has been observed comparing with the group received magnesium hydroxide (control group).

Hypothermia is a common and serious complication that occurs in patients undergoing laparoscopic surgery. Additionaly, various warming methods are used to prevent these conditions in the operating room.  The aim of this study was to compare the effect of two warming methods on physiological indices of patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

In a clinical trial study, 96 patients underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy in Alzahra Hospital of Isfahan were randomly divided into three groups (forced air warming system, warmed intravenous fluids and control group) (number of each group = 32). The intervention was conducted immediately after induction of anesthesia. The core body temperature, SPO2 and respiratory rate were recorded every 15 minutes to 30 minutes after the end of surgery and shivering with the Grossely and Mahajan observation tools in recovery.

There were no statistically significant differences between the three groups in the mean of body temperature, respiratory rate and SPO2 at any time (before induction of anesthesia, during operation and after surgery) (p<0.05). Remarkably, postoperative shivering did not occur in any of the three groups.

The use of active warming methods, including warmed intravenous fluids and forced air warming system in laparoscopic surgery, had no effect on physiological indices. Therefore, it is recommended that the warming method be used according to other conditions of the patients.

Labor pain is one of the most severe pains that women experience during the pregnancy period. Inhalation and foot bath are common methods that reduce the pain of labor. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of warm foot bath with inhalation of rose essence and warm foot bath lonely on pain of labor in primiparous women.

This randomized clncontrolled trial study was carried out on 120 primiparous women who were volunteer for physiologic birth at Shaheed Akbar-Abadi Hospital in Tehran .Conspicuously, the pregnant women were randomly assigned to one of the two intervention groups (warm foot bath with inhalation of rose essence group and warm foot bath group) and control group (routine labor care).Correspondingly, the interventions in both experimental groups were performed for 10 minutes, once at the beginning of the active phase and the second time at the onset of the transition phase. The pain was measured every 30 minutes during the active phase of the labor by using a visual-numerical scale.  After collection and extraction of data, statistical comparison was performed using the SPSS software version 16 and p <0.05 was considered significant. The Chi-square, Fisher exact, ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis and Scheffe tests were used as statistical methods.

The results at this present study showed that the mean of pain severity were significantly lower in the both interventional groups in comparison to the control group at the beginning of the active phase of labor and delivery (p <0.001). However, the mean of pain severity at the transition phase was lower only in warm foot bath with inhalation of rose essence group in comparison to the both warm foot bath and control groups.

Aromatherapy by inhalation of rose essence and foot bath have the positive effects on reducing the pain of labor.

Evidence suggests that Lysosome associated protein transmembrane 4B (LAPTM4B) contributes to the risk of numerous cancers. The present study aimed to find out the impact of LAPTM4B polymorphism on the risk of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in the southeastern Iranian population.

A total of 230 subjects including 110 children diagnosed with ALL and 120 healthy children enrolled in this case-control study. Genomic DNA was extracted from the whole blood by salting out method. Genotyping of LAPTM4B polymorphism was performed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

The results showed that LAPTM4B polymorphism significantly increased the risk of ALL in codominant (OR=1.91, 95% CI =1.08-3.40, p=0.025, 1/2 vs 1/1), dominant (OR=2, 95%CI=1.14-3.54, p=0.014 1/2+2/2 vs 1/1), and allele (OR = 1.74, 95% CI = 1.10–2.75, p = 0.017, 2 vs 1) genetic models

Conclusively, our findings showed that LAPTM4B polymorphism is the risk factor of childhood ALL in our population. Further studies with larger sample sizes and different ethnicities are needed to confirm our findings.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is an inflammatory disease with alterations in immune system. Remarkably, cytokine imbalance plays an important role in pathogenesis of T2DM. The purpose of this study was to determine the serum levels of TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-10 and the effects of sitagliptin on the level of these cytokines in patients with T2DM.

Blood samples were collected from 60 T2DM patients and 30 healthy control subjects (HCs). T2DM patients were divided into two subgroups based on their treatment; with sitagliptin treatment (100 mg/day, n=30) for 8 months and without sitagliptin treatment (n=30). The serum levels of TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-10 cytokines were assessed using ELISA method. ANOVA with posthoc Bonferroni were applied to statistical analysis.

The serum level of TNF-α was significantly higher in T2DM patients without sitagliptin compared to HCs (p=0.002). Whereas, the serum level of TNF-α was significantly lower in patients with sitagliptin compared to patients without sitagliptin (p=0.01). The serum level of IL-10 showed a significant reduction in patients without sitagliptin compared to HCs (p=0.003). On the other hand, a significant elevation was observed in serum level of IL-10 between T2DM patients with and without sitagliptin (p=0.002). Considerably, no significant difference was observed in serum level of IL-1β between T2DM patients with and without sitagliptin and also in comparison to HCs.

Sitagliptin treatment significantly decreased the level of pro-inflammatory TNF-α and increased anti-inflammatory IL-10 in T2DM patients. It seems that sitagliptin had an anti-inflammatory effect on immune system of the patients.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between postural abnormalities with the quality of life and self-efficacy of the blind and partially sighted people.

100 blind and partially sighted people (mean age 34 years old including 48 males and 52 females) under the supervision of the Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted of Arak city (Iran) were selected by available sampling method. The New York test, SF-36 questionnaire, and self-efficacy questionnaire of Scherer were used for assessement of postural abnormalities, the quality of life and self-efficacy, respectively. The   questionnaires were completed by interview.

Results showed the quality of life was favorable, but the self-efficacy was moderate in experimental sujjects. There was a reverse and significant correlation between postural abnormalities with life quality and self-efficacy in blind and partially sighted (p<0.05). Postural abnormalities inversely were a significant predictor for the life quality and self-efficacy in these subjects (p = 0.02).

Generally, results showed that the evaluation of postural abnormalities in partially sighted and blind people had a specific importance and people with more postural abnormalities had lower self-efficacy and life quality. Indetifcation and correction of these disorders have an improtnat role in improving the qlaity of life and self-efficacy of these individuals.

Children with cochlear implants experience problems at all language domains, and have more problems in morpho-syntactic skills than others domains. Considering the importance of morphology and syntax in developing of communication skills of children, this study compared the use of high-frequency morpho-syntactic structures among 4-6 years old children with cochlear implants and typically developing children by use of Photographic Expressive Persian Grammar Test (PEGT).

The participants were 25 children with cochlear implants and 25 typically developing children aged 4-6 years, who were monolingual speakers of Persian. Children with cochlear implants and the typically developing children were recruited from the three Rehabilitation Centers and Kindergartens of Mashhad city (Iran), respectively. Then, PEGT was performed on each child.

A significant difference was observed in mean total test scores between two groups) P<0.05). Also, there were significant differences in all grammatical structures except conditional statement, genitive case and demonstrative pronouns between the two groups (P<0.05).

It can be concluded that children with cochlear implants are weaker than typical children in expression of the high frequency morpho-syntactic skills.

Stability and balance in the elderly are measured using several methods. The purpose of this study was to introduce a new activity based balance index using accelerometer and determine the relationship between this index and postural stability in older woman.

Ninty-two elderly women were selected and participated in this study. For measuring balanace, One Leg Stance, Berg, Functional Reach, 10 m Walking, Timed Up and Go (TUG) and the Fear of Falling tests were used. During the above tests, the acceleration of the center of the body using three axial accelerometer produced by Didehpardaze Saba Co. was recorded.

Data showed significantly negative correlation between balance index and TUG and the 10m walking, respectively (p=0.001, r=-0.503, p=0.001, r=-0664). There was a positive and significant correlation between balance index and fear of falling score (p=0.001, r=0.444). Functional reach test and Berg balance scale significantly correlated with balance index (p=0.001, r=0.395, p=0.001, r=0.336), respectively. The area under curve for receiver operating characteristic (ROC) plots in predicting falling were significant showed sensitivity of 0.857 and a specificity of 0.445.

It can be concluded that the use of accelerometer and new balance index is a reliable and valid method for measuring balance of elderly women, which indicates that the ABI can predict falling in the elderly.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the dosimetric and radiobiological parameters of salivary glands in treatment of patients with oral tongue cancer by 3D conventional radiotherapy (3D-CRT) and intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) techniques.

This study was performed on treatment planning of patients with oral tongue cancer in T2-3/N0 cancer staging. In this way, the treatment planning was performed on CT images for 3D-CRT and IMRT techniques (with 5, 7 and 9 fields) for all patients. Then, the homogeneity (HI) and conformity index (CI) of dose in the target volume and maximum, mean does of the salivary glands and normal tissue complication probability of parotid glands were computed and compared between different treatment.

Results of this study indicated an increase in HI and CI in IMRT compared to 3D-CRT (up to 61.54% and 28.78%). Moreover, the increase in the number of beams in the IMRT technique can lead to decrease in the mean dose of sublingual glands (up to 9.52%) and decrease in the maximum dose of the submandibular glands (up to 6.93%), while, the use of IMRT with 5 and 7 beams can lead to a significant increase in the probability of xerostomia in parotid gland (up to 8.61%) compare with 3D-CRT technique.

It can be concluded that IMRT technique with 9 fields led to improve the salivary glands protection, more homogeneity and conformity in the target volume and reducing the received dose of submandibular and sublingual glands compare to the 3D-CRT in patient with oral tongue cancer.

Classification and prediction are two most important applications of statistical methods in the field of medicine. According to this note that the classical classification are provided due to the clinical symptom and  do not involve the use of specialized information and knowledge. Therefore, using a classifier that can combine all this information, is necessary. The aim of this study was to design a decision support system for classification of thyroid disorder using fuzzy if and then classifier.

The data consisted of 310 patients, including 105 healthy people, 150 hypothyroidisms and 55 hyperthyroidisms, who referred to Shahid Beheshti Hospital and Imam Khomeini Clinic of Hamadan (Iran) in order to investigate the status of their thyroid disease. In this fuzzy system variable including age and BMI, as well as laboratory tests such as TSH, T4, and T3, the score of hyperthyroid and hypothyroid symptoms used as input and the output variable includes individual health status. The max-min Mamdani inference system along with center of gravity deffizifier have been used in the fuzzy toolbox of MATLAB software.

The fuzzy rule-based classification model had a great performance for predicting thyroid disorder in the both test and train sets.

Fuzzy rules-based classifier by using overlapping sets, had a high potential for managing the uncertainty associated with medical diagnosis. Also, by enabling the use of linguistic variables in the decision making process and design, the interpretation of the results has improved for doctors who are not familiar with modeling concepts.

Generalized joint hypermobility is defined as a physiologic increase in the joint range of motion which is affected by various factors such as physical activity level and socioeconomic status. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between generalized joint hypermobility with physical activity level and socioeconomic status in Iranian school students.

In this study 782 school students (age ranged:7-18years) were allocated based on the cluster sampling method. The generalized joint hypermobility was determined according to the Beighton criteria. The level of physical activity and socioeconomic status were determined using questionnaires. Correspondingly, the participants answered a questionnaire concerning gym sport, sports in general and musical activity.

There was a significant correlation between the physical activity level and the Beighton score (P<0.01), but there was no significant correlation between Beighton score and the socioeconomic status (P >0.05). None of them were predictive of generalized joint hypermobility. There were significant and direct correlations between Beighton score and participation in the gym sports (P<0.05). Musical activity was reversely correlated with Beighton score (P<0.05).

According to the results, there was no relationship between the generalized joint hypermobility with the socio-economic status in the study population in Iran. However, the generalized joint hypermobility was increased with increasing in the physical activity level. Because of the relationship between the generalized joint hypermobility with participation in gym sports and musical activity, it is recommended to examine the role of these factors on the generalized joint hypermobility in school students in details.

The present study was performed in order to investigate the association between shift work and having second job, with quality of life in a large sample of male employees in Isfahan steel company adjusting for the effects of demographic, lifestyle and job stress confounders.

This cross-sectional study was carried out on 3063 employees of Isfahan steel company, who were selected through a multistage cluster sampling among 16000 employees in 2016. Demographic and lifestyle data were obtained from a self-administered questionnaire. Relatively, for evaluating the quality of life (QoL), EQ-5D, for job stress, the Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) questionnaire and for physical activity IPAQ were used. Latent class regression was used for data analysis.

In study sample, 57.7% were shift workers and 10% had second job. Participants were classified into two classes, high (80.49%) and low (19.51%) QoL, and this variable was considered as the response variable in latent class regression. Shift workers had17% lower odds for being in high quality of life class in adjusted model (OR=0.83; 95% CI: (0.683, 1.015)). No significant relationship was observed between second job and quality of life

The present study showed that the shift workers has significant lower quality of life, while no significant association was found with the second job. Through moderating the effective factors on quality of life, it is possible to enhance it and as a result, increase the productivity of this population.

The urban family physician program for increase the utilization of health services has been implemented in Fars and Mazandaran provinces since 2012. In this way, this study aimed to determine the benefit level for population covered by the urban family physician program in Iran.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2017. Participants on the households covered by the urban family physician program; were selected by random cluster sampling. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire consisting of 2 parts: individual variables and benefit level of health services with 33 open and closed questions; its validity and reliability were confirmed.

Among 1768 households with a population of 5628 people, 5521(98.1%) had one type of basic insurance. 0.31% of the people who had supplementary insurance. The average time between the home and the work place for the family physician was 18.6±18.9 minutes on foot and 5.7±5.1 by car. Correspondingly, 75.8% of those who had basic insurance were visited at least once by their family physician. The average family physician visits for participants over 15 years old was 5.14 times per year. Factors such as health records, household size, supplementary insurance, illness, education, occupation, physician replacement, availability time, and familiarity with the Family Physician Program were effective in terms of coverage of the affected population with a meaningful level (P<0.05).

This study showed that all covered individuals did not benefit from the urban family physician program, and a number of individual factors influenced the benefit of the urban family physician program.

It has been well established that early intervention programs for preschool children are both effective for decreasing the potential problems in adulthood and also for preventing from chronic stuttering. Syllable-time speech therapeutic method is considered as an effective method in these children. The present study investigated the effectiveness of the Westmead therapeutic method on preschool children with stuttering.

Six children who had stuttering with an age range of 3 to 6 years old, participated in this study. The measurement indicator of stuttering severity was percentage syllables stuttered (%SS).  Initially, during stage 1, a parents and their children were trained to implement treatment approach. The treatment was carried out by mothers at home for around 4 to 6 times during a day. Treatment was implemented using a syllable by syllable method on a habitual speech rate, which lasted at least 10 weeks.

Outcome were analyzed using the visual analysis method.  Thirty-three of participants were able to reach second phase in the first level of treatment. Five children achieved an average percent of syllables stuttering below 50%, after approximately 10 therapeutic sessions. Remarkably, samples provided by mothers at home, proved these clinical reduction results.

As this study indicated, even first phase of syllabic speech therapeutic approach can be considered as an effective method to reduce stuttering events in preschool children.

The administration of appropriate drugs to patients is one of the most important processes of treatment and requires careful decision-making based-on the current conditions of the patient and its history and symptoms. In many cases, patients may require more than one drug, or in addition to having a previous illness and receiving the drug, they need new drugs for the new illness, which may increase medical errors in the administration of the drug and the adverse drug events(ADE) such as drug interactions for the patient.

In this article, the stages of designing and describing the requirements and the modeling of the ontology-based semantic recommender system of the prescribing physician and the discovery of the ADEs were presented. First, the requirements of the system were extracted and described in detail and then, based on the extracted requirements, the modeling of the system using the Unified Modeling Language of UML2.0 was discussed. Then, according to the extracted requirements for the discovery of ADEs, a proper ontology was designed for the system and implemented by Protégé software. In order to evaluate the functions of recommendation and discovering ADEs (interactions), a prototype was developed using Java language, and a collection of rules for reasoning and discovering interactions and ADEs were gathered.

The results of the system performance evaluation for the functions of detecting ADEs and medication recommendation suggests improvement of the proposed approach to 9.25% and 11.3% in the precision criterion, 29% and 60.6% in the recall, and 26% (respectively, approaches to the detection of ADEs and drug recommendations).

The use of this system as a computerized physician ordering entry can, in addition to helping physicians to prescribe a more accurate prescription, reduce the risks to the health of patients resulting from medical errors in the prescribing phase.

Regular exercise training has been shown to be a useful option to treat and prevent type 2 diabetes. Correspondingly, the purpose of this study was to investigate effects of 12 weeks of combined aerobic-resistance exercise training on levels of chemerin, omentin and insulin resistance in men with type 2 diabetes.

In this clinical trial research, 20 male patients with type 2 diabetes were randomly divided into two groups combined aerobic-resistance training (n=10) and control (n=10). Subjects in training group performed 12 weeks aerobic-resistance training, 3 weekly training sessions with given intensity (aerobic: intensity of 60-70% maximum heart rate resistance: intensity 60-70% repetition maximum). Blood sampling was taken measurements of for chemerin, omentin resistance, fasting glucose and insulin resistance in the beginning and after 12 training protocol weeks were conducted.

After 12 weeks, in the combined training group chemerin (p=0.01), resistance insulin (p=0.01) and fasting glucose (p=0.001) decreased significantly and Vo2max increased significantly (p=0.001) than the control group. Significant change was not observed at the levels of omentin (p=0.37).

12 weeks of aerobic-resistance training in men with type 2 diabetes decreased the levels of chemerin, insulin resistance and also fasting glucose, but did not affect the level of omentin.

Many parents with autistic children are worried about some of the clinical symptoms of autism disorder, including sensory impairment in their offspring, due to their genetic uniformity and healthy childhood and autism. The purpose of this study was to compare the sensory organs processing patterns of autism individuals with their normal counterparts.

In this descriptive-analytical study, two groups of 17 healthy siblings with autism and 17 normal peoples in the age range of 5 to 12 years participated in the study. In order to assess the children's parents, they were asked to complete a 9-factor sensor sensory status questionnaire for their children after obtaining written consent from the parents.

The results showed that there was no significant difference between two groups of healthy sisters or brothers with autism and their normal counterparts in any of the factors (p<0.05).

Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that healthy siblings of autism have similar patterns to normal children in sensory processing.

Propolis is a natural bee product, which has been used in folk medicine for the management of different diseases. Regarding to anti-inflammatory effects of Propolis, in this study we evaluated the analgesic effects of hydroalchoholic extract of Iranian Propolis on acute and chronic pain.

192 young adult male albino mice (25-30 g) in 24 groups (n = 8) were used. Propolis (100, 200, and 500 mg/kg), vehicle and morphine as Positive control drug (5mg/Kg) were injected intera- peritoneally 30 min before the pain evaluation tests. Acute and chronic pain was assessed by by using hot plate (HP), tail flick (TF), formalin (FT) and writhing (WR) tests.

Comapred to the control group, Propolis extract in all doeses increased pain tolerance in both the HP and TF (P<0.01). In the FT, Propolis extract decreased the reaction time in neurogenic and inflammatory phases than the control group (P<0.01). Pretreatment with the Propolis extract reduced the number and time of of abdominal writhes in the WR than the control group (P<0.01).

The above findings showed that Iranian Propolis have anti-analgesic effects in both acute and chronic models of pain.

The use of L-asparaginase as a chemotherapeutic agent is an effective strategy for the treatment of leukemic lymphoblasts. Since the use of bacterial L-asparaginase causes side effects due to hypersensitivity reactions, search for new enzyme sources is one of the active research areas. In this study, the characterization of produced L-asparaginase by indigenous yeast strains was investigated.

In this study, 130 yeast strains were evaluated. Remarkably, AG90 isolate with 0.94 IU/ml enzyme production was selected as the superior strain.

The molecular identification of the AG90 showed that this strain exhibited a high level of similarity (99%) with Sarocladium sp. and introduced as a Sarocladium sp. AG90. The fermentation broth of the superior strain showed that 86% of the enzyme was produced extracellularly. The Km and Vmax values of the produced enzyme for the L-Asparagine substrate were calculated as 9.74 mM and 19.19 μmol/min, respectively.

The obtained results in this study can help to introduce a new enzyme with eukaryotic origin to reduce the toxicity, sensitivity and side effects associated of drug consumption.

Rrecent studies indicated that serotonergic receptors can be mediate the glucocorticoids’ effects on behavioral procesess. The aim of this study was to determine the role of serotonergic receptor (5-HT6) in the effects of acute stress and corticosterone on fear memory reconsolidation in mice.

Male adult mice were trained and tested in an inhibitory avoidance task (1mA, 3sec). For assessment memory reconsolidation, immediately after memory reactivation memory (48 hr. after training) animal received corticosterone or exposed to an acute restraint stress (10 min) and also received SC203575 as a 5-HT6 receptor agonist or SB271046 as an antagonist of 5-HT6 receptors simultaneously. Memory retention test was done 5, 8, 10 and 12 days after memory reactivation.

The results showed that corticosterone injection or acute stress application after memory reactivation impaired memory reconsolidation in subsequent tests. Co-treatment with both the 5-HT6 agonist SC203575 and antagonist SB271046 inhibited the effects of corticosterone or acute stress on memory reconsolidation.

These findings indicated that the 5-HT6 receptors modulate the effects of glucocorticoids or acute stress on fear memory reconsolidation.

Breast cancer is one of the most common malignancies in women worldwide. Today, nanoparticles are one of the hopes of treatment and diagnosis of many diseases, including cancer. the The present study aimed to explore the effect of topotycan and zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnONPs) combination on cytotoxicity and P53 gene expression in MCF7 breast cancer cells.

Cancerous MCF7 cell line were treated with different concentrations of ZnONPs and topotecan as an anti-cancer drug, separately, as well as combined formulation. Then, the cell viability was evaluated using MTT assay. The expression level of P53 gene was evaluated in treated cells via real time PCR after RNA extraction and cDNA synthesis.

According to MTT results, the ZnONPs and topotecan significantly decreased the viability of MCF7 cells in a dose-dependent manner. Also, the combined effect of ZnONPS and topotecan on the MCF7 cell line at concentrations of 45 mol/ml of zinc and different concentrations of topotecan had an additional toxic effect. Our data revealed that mRNA level of P53 was up regulated (1.3-fold) in cells treated with topotecan combined with ZnONPs.

Our results demonstrated that combination of the topotecan and ZnONPs could have a powerful synergistic cytotoxic effect on breast cancer cell line.

Lichen planus is a mucocutaneouse inflammatory disease. Its complications including the formation of ulcers, irritation and discomfort, and the possibility of malignancy. In previous studies, no definite treatment for desquamative gingivitis due to lichen planus has been reported and different treatments have different results. According to importance of the subject, the main aim of this study was pressenting a special curative method for this disease.

 A 45-year-old woman was referred to a dental clinic with a complaint of sorness of her gingiva that was resistant to the routine treatment. The patient was systemically healthy. In the intraoral examination, white and red lesions were observed in the mucous membranes of the cheek and tongue. According to the presence of the lines of wikham, the diagnosis of lichen plan was introduced. The gums also had a desquamative gingivitis. Some calculus and plaque were also seen in the examination. Initially, the presence of dysplasia was role out by coloring Toluidian Blue. The patient was then referred to periodontitist and treated with scaling, root planling and accurate health education. In order to control the lesions in the cheek and tongue, the patient was asked to take a triamcinolone daily and for more resistant gum lesions, apply hydrocortisone ointment twice a day for 5 minutes. The patient was re-examined after one, two and three weeks, and a clear recovery from the first week began and resolved until the third week.

Conclusively, the administration of corticosteroids using the Terry method is a suitable method for treating desquamative gingivitis caused by lichen planus.