Reviews in Clinical Medicine
Volume:8 Issue: 1, Winter 2021

A febrile seizure (FS) occurs in 2-4% of children aged 6 months to 5 years. A simple febrile seizure is the most common seizure in children. According to the evidence, both genetic and environmental factors affect the occurrence of this condition. The purpose of this study was to determine the association between zinc deficiency and sociological factors, and febrile seizures.

This case-control study evaluated 136 children at 22 Bahman Hospital of Gonabad, Iran, from July 2015 to March 2018. We selected 36 children aged 6 months to 5 years with febrile seizures as the case group and 100 febrile children without a seizure, in the same age range, as the control group. The demographic characteristics, place of residence, family history of seizures, and zinc serum level were recorded, and data were analyzed by frequency, average, and standard deviation, and Chi-square statistical tests. The odds ratios were calculated by logistic regression with a 95% confidence level. SPSS version 22.0 was used for statistical analysis.

Totally, 38.8% of the cases with FS and 5.0% of the febrile children without seizure had a zinc deficiency. The serum zinc level in the case group was 75.44 ± 16.98 µgr/dL and in the control group was 100.27 ± 24.23 µgr/dL (P < 0.001). The odds ratio of zinc deficiency in the patients with FS compared to the febrile children without convulsion was 1.069 (1.045-1.151).

Children with FS are more susceptible to have zinc deficiency than those febrile but without a seizure. Therefore, zinc deficiency could be a preventable and treatable risk factor for FS.

The present study aimed to compare the anterior segment measurements between optical low-coherence reflectometry (LenStar LS900) and anterior segment optical coherence tomography (CASIA2 OCT).

A total of 198 right eyes of 198 healthy participants were used for the current study, according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Ocular biometry parameters, such as central corneal thickness (CCT), anterior chamber depth (ACD), keratometry, and anterior chamber width (ACW), were measured usingLenStar LS 900 and CASIA2 OCT. The differences and correlations were assessed between these two instruments. The agreement was calculated as the 95% limits of agreement (LoA).

Among 198 subjects with a mean age of 29.39±7.88 years who enrolled in the study, 106 individuals (53.5%) were women. The mean CCT values were 531.7±35.25 and 527.3±37.82 µm for LenStar and OCT, respectively (P˂0.0001). The ACD measurements showed 2.92±0.40 and 2.95±0.43 mm for LenStar and OCT, respectively (P=0.0549). The ACW mean values were 12.04±0.52 and 11.79±0.49 mm by LenStar and OCT (P˂0.0001). The 95% LoA between the two instruments were within the ranges of -20.79 to 29.43 µm, -0.50 to -0.43 mm, -0.32 to 0.82 mm, and -0.70 to 0.87 D for CCT, ACD, ACW, and astigmatism, respectively.

LenStar and OCT showed to have interchangeable ACD measurements; however, the results of CCT, ACW, and corneal astigmatism measured by these two instruments demonstrated clinically significant differences

Gastric bypass surgery is an intervention used to treat class III obesity and its complications. Evidence is scarce regarding its benefits among the Iranian population, especially its role in resolving obesity-related complaints and comorbidities. The present study aimed to investigate the impact of gastric bypass surgery on the improvement of obesity-related complaints and comorbidities in morbid obesity.

This study was conducted on 35 morbidly obese patients who volunteered to undergo gastric bypass surgery. Anthropometric data, comorbidity status, and dietary habits were collected at baseline and six months postoperatively. Data analysis was performed in SPSS version 16.0.

The majority of the patients were female (80%). A significant difference was observed in the frequency distribution of normal dietary habits (five regular meals per day) before and after surgery (P = 0.01). In comparison, the distribution was not significant for snacking and three large meals per day (P > 0.05). All complaints of eating disorders according to self-reports (e.g., overeating and night eating syndrome) significantly improved (P < 0.05 ). Moreover, the dose of the medications prescribed for the comorbidities associated with obesity reduced significantly (P = 0.001). The frequency of several obesity-related complaints (e.g., knee pain, hirsutism, acanthosis nigricans, and sleep apnea) also decreased significantly (P < 0.05). However, no significant improvement was observed in hair loss, brittle nails, and menstrual dysfunction (P > 0.05).

Accordingly, gastric bypass surgery could improve obesity-related complaints six months postoperatively. Also, according to the patients’ self -declaration, patients’ adherence to “normal eating habits” increased during this period, and their eating disorders like night eating syndrome (NES) and overeating behaviors decreased compared to before the surgery.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which has spread to many countries, is so severe that it progresses rapidly to acute respiratory failure. Therefore, in our paper, we aimed to describe and evaluate the most practical laboratory pro-inflammatory factors to predict the course of severe COVID-19 cases.Given the physiopathology of COVID-19 and the consequent immune system hyperactivity, we started to investigate the background pathology of these occurrences aiming to find the prognostic laboratory factors in COVID-19 cases. All reviews focused on the potential cellular and molecular mechanisms causing the cytokine storm in viral diseases, and several studies approved applicable laboratory parameters for COVID-19 patients. Based on our data, increased CRP level, LDH, serum ferritin, creatine kinase (CK), higher D-dimer and FDP levels, IL-6, cardiac troponin I and longer PT can be potential markers for predicting the course of infection; particularly, D-dimer, which was elevated to five times the original count in severe cases. Apart from that, the severe cases showed lymphopenia, neutrophilia, thrombocytopenia, and prolonged PTT. However, there was contradictory evidence about AST, ALT, BUN, and serum creatinine.The major cause of COVID-19 in critical patients was a cytokine storm; therefore, prognostic factors in the cytokine storm can also predict the prognosis of COVID-19. Thus, severe cases can be solved by early detection of these laboratory parameters.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death worldwide. One of the most important events in the course of COPD is acute exacerbation. Acute exacerbation of COPD (AECOPD) is characterized by the aggravation of dyspnea, cough, and sputum. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease exacerbation leads to respiratory failure, hospitalization, morbidity, and mortality. During and after the COPD attack, lung function dramatically decreased.  Bacterial pneumonia is an important and serious risk factor for AECOPD. However, there are other inflammatory and non-inflammatory causes of AECOPD. Antibiotic treatment is usually challenging in AECOPD. Procalcitonin is a non-hormone active protein and precursor to calcitonin that consists of 116 amino acids, and 13 kDa weight is produced by the neuroendocrine cells of the thyroid gland. However, procalcitonin is secreted in septic shock, metastatic cancers, bacterial and fungal infections; therefore, serum procalcitonin is increased in bacterial pneumonia of AECOPD. Some studies recommended procalcitonin serum measurement as a guide for antibiotic initiation in AECOPD.

Lung cancer is among the most common types of cancer with considerable mortality and morbidity around the globe. There are various risk factors involved in the development of lung cancer, and cancer prevention plans are mainly based on controlling the modifiable risk factors. While tobacco smoking is considered the main modifiable risk factor of lung cancer, some other modifiable  factors including diet have become the center of attention in recent years. Although tobacco smoking control is one of the main strategies for preventing lung cancer in many countries, it has been discussed that eating a healthy diet can also be an adjuvant strategy for reducing the risk of developing lung cancer. In the present narrative review, we did a literature search for studies that addressed the effect of the Mediterranean diet on the development of lung cancer. Our findings show that different types of Mediterranean diets could be beneficial for reducing the risk of developing lung cancer.

Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy is one of the most common musculoskeletal diseases with a considerable burden. Most of the affected individuals experience muscle weakness as the common muscular symptom. Despite the underlying genetic mechanism which is extensively studied, curative treatment is not available for patients with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, and only supportive care is considered as the treatment of choice. Recently, several studies addressed the treatment of facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy by genetic engineering strategies, most of which indicate the effectiveness of different types of small interfering ribonucleic acids. However, these studies are still in the preclinical phase and it seems that there is a long way ahead of curing facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy despite recent advances in the field of genetic engineering. This study aimed to review the underlying genetic mechanism of Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy alongside providing the latest preclinical studies related to the treatment of this disease.

The odds ratio with 95%CIs was used to evaluated the synergistic effects between high salt intake and H. pylori infection among gastric cancer cases. Heterogeneity was assessed by I2 index and Cochrane Q-test; In addition, the presence of publication bias was measured using Begg’s p-value and Egger’s p-value test (18). There were 7 studies met our criteria. These studies were conducted during 2003-2019 in Korea, Japan, United states, China, and Portugal. We evaluated data of 8,068 cases. H. pylori infection was confirmed by ELISA and UBT in these eligible studies (Table 1). The frequency of gastric cancer in habitual high salt intakes with positive H. pylori infection was significantly greater than those preference salty food with negative H. pylori infection (Chi-square: 5.33; p-value: 0.02). Our results suggested that there is a positive association between high salt intake and risk of gastric cancer in H. pylori infected-individuals (OR: 1.47; 95%CI: 1.01-2.15; p-value: 0.04; I2: 83.6; Q-value: 36.6; Begg’s p-value: 0.13; Egger’s p-value: 0.25) (Fig. 1). Gastric cancer is one of the top cause of cancer-related death in the world (1). Unfortunately, gastric cancer has a poor-prognosis and untreated early gastric cancer lesions will progress to advanced gastric cancer during 4-5 years (2). Gastric cancer is a heterogeneous malignancy with multifactorial causes including socio-economic status, diet, environmental condition, genetic polymorphism as well as infectious agents particularly chronic infection by Helicobacter pylori (3). In 1994, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced that H. pylori is considered as class I carcinogens and etiologic cause of human gastric cancer (4). However, a high rate of H. pylori infection in areas with a low incidence of gastric cancer remains an enigma (5). It has been suggested that H. pylori infection alone cannot cause gastric cancer without synergistic effects of lifestyle, diet, etc (6-7). On the other hand, there is evidence that dietary salt has an association with gastric adenocarcinoma (8-9). Therefore, it may that H. pylori infection and high salt intakes have synergistic effects in the development of gastric cancer. the previous studies reveal that salt cause upregulation of H. pylori cagA gene during in vitro experiments (10). We performed a comprehensive literature search in several databases including PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and Google scholar using search terms consisting “Helicobacter pylori”, “Salt”, “Gastric cancer”, “Dietary” and “Salt intake” without limitation in time and language. The potential relevant documents were evaluated and the required data such as first author, publication year, country, total cases, the frequency of high salt intake among H. pylori-infected cases with gastric cancer or odds ratio corresponding 95% confidence intervals (95%CIs), and H. pylori diagnostic test were summarized in Table 1. The odds ratio with 95%CIs was used to evaluate the synergistic effects between high salt intake and H. pylori infection among gastric cancer cases. Heterogeneity was assessed by I2 index and Cochrane Q-test; In addition, the presence of publication bias was measured using Begg’s p-value and Egger’s p-value test (18). There were 7 case-control studies that met our criteria. These studies were conducted during 2003-2019 in Korea, Japan, United states, China, and Portugal. We evaluated data of 8,068 cases. H. pylori infection was confirmed by ELISA and UBT in these eligible studies (Table 1). The sodium concentration was assessed by history, urinary sodium, as well as Food frequency questionnaires (FFQs) in these studies.The frequency of gastric cancer in habitual high salt intakes with positive H. pylori infection was significantly greater than those who preference salty food with negative H. pylori infection (Chi-square: 5.33; p-value: 0.02). Our results suggested that there is a positive association between high salt intake and risk of gastric cancer in H. pylori infected-individuals (OR: 1.47; 95%CI: 1.01-2.15; p-value: 0.04; I2: 83.6; Q-value: 36.6; Begg’s p-value: 0.13; Egger’s p-value: 0.25) (Fig 1). Tsugane et al, 2004 were suggested that there is a significant relation between salt intake and the subsequent risk of gastric cancer in a Japanese population (19). In addition, Ge et al., 2012 provided a systematic review to show the association between Habitual dietary salt intake and risk of developing to gastric cancer using 11 retrospective single-center studies (20).