مجله دانشکده پزشکی اصفهان
پیاپی 700 (هفته چهارم بهمن 1401)

Hand radiographs are commonly used to evaluate bone maturity. So that the significant difference between the estimated bone age and the chronological age can indicate a developmental disorder. However, the manual evaluation of images is usually a time-consuming and observer-dependent process. Therefore, in this paper, an automatic method for the assessment of bone age using radiographs of children's hands is proposed.

In this fundamental-applied research, the collection of radiographic images of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) was used, and transfer learning methods were proposed. The input images were first pre-processed due to low quality. Then a pre-trained model based on DenseNet-121 was used to extract the discriminating spatial features.

Evaluations using five pre-trained models on the RSNA dataset showed that the DenseNet-121 model, after adjustment, could perform better than other models, with a mean absolute error of 9.8 months.

Skeletal maturity can be estimated with satisfactory accuracy using the DenseNet-121 model, and this method can help radiologists in quick and accurate measurement of bone age.

Vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE) are one of the most common hospital pathogens due to antibiotic and biocide resistance, which has become of the major problems in hospitals. This study was conducted in order to determine the pattern of antibiotic resistance, the minimum inhibitory concentration of chlorhexidine and benzalkonium chloride, to investigate the prevalence of biocide resistance genes norA, smr and qacAB and to measure the time-kill assay of biocides in VRE isolates.

In this study, 50 isolates of VRE were collected from teaching hospitals in Isfahan and confirmed by microbiological testing. Antibiotic susceptibility was determined by disk diffusion method and the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of benzalkonium chloride and chlorhexidine was determined by broth microdilution method. Prevalence of biocide resistance genes and determining the killing power of biocides were investigated by PCR and time-kill assay respectively.

Among 50 clinical isolates, all isolates were resistant to ciprofloxacin and erythromycin and susceptible to linezolid. We reported the MIC range of benzalkonium chloride and chlorhexidine 4-8 μg/ml and 1-8 μg/ml respectively. The frequency of norA, smr and qacAB genes were 84%, 56% and 24%.

The results of the present study showed that in addition to linezolid as the drug of choice for vancomycin-resistant isolates, the biocides chlorhexidine and benzalkonium chloride also had a very good lethal effect on these isolates. But due to the high resistance to other antibiotics, it seems necessary to do an antibiotic sensitivity test.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disease that leads to progressive joint damage, pain and loss of function, which has no known therapy so far. Curcumin has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and analgesic properties. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of supplementation with curcumin piperine (a highly soluble form of curcumin) on the clinical symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis.

The present study was a double-blind randomized controlled trial study, which was conducted on 54 adult patients aged 20 to 65 years who were suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. The patients were randomly divided into two groups; (i) intervention group received a curcumin piperine capsule containing 500 mg curcumin, and (ii) control group received a placebo capsule containing 500 mg maltodextrin daily for three months.

A total of 52 samples completed the study. The average age of participants in the intervention group was 53.5 ± 6.1 and in the control group was 54.6 ± 8.1, which was not statistically significant. The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and finally the disease activity index (DAS-28) decreased significantly in both groups at the end of the study compared to the beginning of the study. But this reduction in the intervention group was significantly higher than the control group (erythrocyte sedimentation rate and disease activity index).

Use of curcumin - piperine supplement significantly improved the clinical indicators of patients with rheumatoid arthritis.