مجله دانشکده پزشکی اصفهان
پیاپی 602 (هفته دوم بهمن 1399)

Paclitaxel is used in chemotherapy to treat cancers of the breast, ovary, lung, bladder, prostate, and testes. Considering the role of nano-zinc oxide antioxidant in anti-inflammatory processes, in this study, we used nano-zinc oxide for protective effect on spermatogenesis in adult male rats.

18 Wistar adult male rats with a mean weight of 250 g were divided 3groups under a standard diet. Then, control group was intraperitoneally treated with normal saline, second group with paclitaxel (3 mg/kg), and the third with paclitaxel and nano-zinc oxide (5 mg/kg). 48 days after the treatment, the rats were sacrificed without pain by C2O, and blood and testicular tissue samples were prepared. The levels of testosterone, luteinizing hormone (LH), and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) were determined. Using hematoxylin and eosin staining, germinal cells were counted using samples randomly. One way ANOVA and Duncan tests were used for data analysis at the statistical significant level of P < 0.05.

The mean serum levels of testosterone, LH, and FSH hormones, and the number of germinal cells in testicular tissue decreased in the group treated with paclitaxel compared to the control group. The above indices improved in the group treated with paclitaxel and nano-zinc oxide compared to the paclitaxel-treated group

It seems that consumption of paclitaxel with impression on male germ cells result in decrease in spermatogenesis process. Using of the nano-zinc oxide as protective factor can compensate negative effects caused by paclitaxel on germ cells and the process of spermatogenesis.

Prostate cancer is one of the most prevalent cancer types in Iran and worldwide. Prostate cancer imaging had been promoted using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The aim of present study was to estimate prostate tumors volume by a computerized approach.

By using a Matlab command, the regions of interest were precisely identified. The Haralick features were applied. In addition, using the principal component analysis algorithm, five important features were selected among 17 features. Then, a support vector machine classifier was applied to classify cancerous and normal tissues. To increase the accuracy of the machine vector classifier, the proposed solutions were applied: 1) a new feature was introduced and extracted, 2) all features were normalized, 3) to optimize mutual validation, k-fold changed from 5 to 10. In addition, the support vector machine classifier was implemented by using the Gaussian kernel, radial basis function, and linear kernel. If the tumor was identified in more than one slice, all identified region of interest (ROIs) in different slices were considered in the feature extractions and tumor volume estimation processes.

Among the Haralick features, contrast, correlation, homogeneity, energy, and entropy were the most powerful features in this study that confirmed the findings of previous studies. The sensitivity of the classifier was obtained 0.9180 using Gaussian kernel, while with radial basis function and linear kernels obtained 0.7097 and 0.8571, respectively. In addition, the specificity of Gaussian, radial basis function, and linear kernels were obtained 0.6500, 0.8305, and 0.7069, respectively. The accuracy with Gaussian and linear kernels was obtained 0.7851 which was greater than with the radial basis function. The feature extraction of the regions of interest, feature reduction, and classification steps took less than one minute which indicated the proposed algorithm was fast. It was also repeatable.

The proposed computerized estimation of prostate tumors volume can increase the accuracy of the diagnosis. It is quick and simply repeatable.

Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) is a pandemic highly pathogenic viral infection caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) appeared in Wuhan of China and then spread worldwide. The genome assessment of this virus revealed that SARS-CoV-2 has phylogenetically high similarity with SARS-like bat viruses. So, the bat can be considered as a primary reservoir of this virus. The intermediate and transfer source of this virus to human has not yet been recognized. In the present study, the origin and evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in comparison with the two SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) respiratory syndrome viruses, as well as the genetic and phylogenetic evidences regards SARS-COV-2 was discussed.