Journal of Studies in Medical Sciences
Volume:35 Issue: 2, 2024

Surgical Site Infection (SSI) is the most common and costly complication among patients undergoing surgery, including neurosurgery. The aim of this study was to investigate the factors associated with surgical site infection in neurosurgery of Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Kashan.

In this case-control study, out of 1350 cases of neurosurgery in Shahid Beheshti Hospital of Kashan, 30 patients had surgical site infection and were selected as the case group. Also, 90 patients without infection were selected as the control group. The required information was extracted from patients' files and analyzed by SPSS software version 22.

Out of 1350 cases of neurosurgery in Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Kashan, 30 people (2.2%) had infection at the operation site. Surgical infection was not significantly associated with gender, smoking, history of diabetes and type of surgery (p> 0.05) but was significantly associated with age and radiotherapy/chemotherapy, and was higher in older patient and patient with a history of radiotherapy/chemotherapy.

The frequency of infection at the surgery site was 2.2% and among the mentioned risk factors, age and radiotherapy/chemotherapy were the effective factors in the incidence of infection.

Despite the development of anti-human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, cervical cancer is still a common disease in women, especially in developing countries. The existence of a hypoxic microenvironment causes the failure of traditional treatments. In this study, a combined treatment method based on cisplatin and Clostridium novyi-NT is proposed for the treatment of cervical cancer.

The TC-1 cell line, which is capable of expressing HPV-16 E6/7 oncoproteins, was transplanted subcutaneously into the right flank of 6–8-week-old female C57/BL6 mice. Tumor-bearing mice were randomly divided into four groups, and after selecting the control group, they were treated with different methods, including combined treatment based on cisplatin and bacterial spores. Western blot analysis was used to investigate the effects of antihypoxia treatment and the expression of P53 tumor suppressor proteins, and RT-PCR was used to measure changes in the expression of E6, Bax, and Bcl-2 genes.

  This study clearly showed that a combined treatment with C. novyi-NT and cisplatin significantly increased the expression of the p53 tumor suppressor protein compared with cisplatin alone. Simultaneously, this combined treatment causes regression of tumor size and decreased expression of the E6 carcinogenic gene related to human papilloma virus.

This study showed that the development of a combined treatment method based on C. novyi-NT and cisplatin against cervical cancer can overcome the treatment limitations caused by the hypoxic areas of the tumor.

The impact of the weight of backpacks with different weights on the foot, which is the link between the human body and the ground, has received less attention from researchers. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare ground reaction force distribution between dominant and non-dominant legs among female students while carrying different loads.

The present study was semi-experimental and laboratory. Twenty female students at age of 14-17 participated as subject in this semi-experimental study. Participants carried backpacks with 10%, 15%, and 20% of body weight during walking. Ground reaction force data of subjects in both dominant and non-dominant legs was collected by a foot pressure system. Repeated measure ANOVA was run to analyze the obtained data. All the analyzes were performed at a significance level of 0.05 using SPSS 22 software.

The results showed that the symmetry index between dominant and non-dominant legs in lateral heel (P=0.045), second and fifth metatarsals (P=0.023), toes 2-5 (P=0.000) were significantly greater in carrying backpack 20% of body weight as compared to 10% of body weight.

According to the results, it seems that increasing weight of backpack can rise the symmetry index between dominant and non-dominant legs that indicate difference and dissimilarity in performance of dominant and non-dominant legs in students.

Body weight loss is a common complication in hypoxic conditions. Several studies have reported that hypoxia increases the production of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) in in vitro and in vivo models. The present study investigates the role of circulating TNF-α concentration in body weight loss in acute and chronic systemic hypoxia.

In this experimental study, 28 adults male Wistar rats were divided into four acute or chronic control and acute or chronic hypoxia groups. Animals were exposed to room air with 21% oxygen level or hypoxia with 10-11% oxygen level in a normobaric hypoxic chamber for two days (acute) or ten days (chronic). TNF-α concentration was evaluated using the ELISA method. SPSS version 17 software was used for data analysis. The findings related to the weight of rats were used from the paired-sample t-test, and the data related to the concentration of tumor necrosis factor-alpha from the Two-tailed Student's t-test. Differences were considered significant at p>0.05 level.

The results showed that acute (p < 0.001) and chronic (p < 0.05) hypoxia caused a significant increase in the concentration of TNF-α in the serum, as well as induction of acute (p < 0.01) and chronic (p < 0.001) systemic hypoxia.) significantly decreased body weight before and after hypoxia induction.

Our findings show that acute and chronic systemic hypoxia is associated with increased serum levels of TNF-α, and acute and chronic systemic hypoxia is associated with weight loss. Due to the association of TNF-α with weight loss, the increase of TNF-α may be the reason for body weight loss in hypoxic conditions.

Aging is associated with dyslipidemia, cardiac hypertrophy and heart damage. Gallic acid has been introduced as an effective agent in improving cardiovascular disorders. In the present study, we demonstrated the protective effects of oral Gallic acid consumption on dyslipidemia and cardiac hypertrophy as well as markers of cardiac damage (lactate dehydrogenase and cardiac creatine kinase).

In this experimental study, 32 male Wistar rats were randomly divided into four groups (eight rats in each group): control, control treated with Gallic acid at a dose of 25 mg/kg through gavage for eight weeks, aged rats induced by D-galactose at a dose of 150 mg/kg via intraperitoneal injection for eight weeks without treatment, aged rats induced by D-galactose and treated with Gallic acid. Aging occurred in groups 3 and 4. Cardiac hypertrophy, biochemical factors, and lipid profile were evaluated. One-Way ANOVA was used to compare between groups. SPSS software version 26 was used for statistical calculation. P<0.05 was considered significant.

Aged rats induced with D-galactose showed cardiac hypertrophy compared to the control group (p < 0.01), which was associated with dyslipidemia and increased heart damage markers including lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) (p < 0.001) and Cardiac creatine kinase (CK-MB) (p < 0.05) was associated. Treatment with Gallic acid improved cardiac hypertrophy (p < 0.05), CHOL, LDL (p < 0.001), LDH (p < 0.001) and CK-MB (p < 0.01) in aged rats.

Our study showed that Gallic acid can be introduced as a therapeutic target in heart problems associated with aging. However, more studies with a larger sample size are needed.

Early detection and reliable differentiation of the Alzheimer’s diseases from normal aging dementia provide optimal rehabilitation. MRI is a convenient imaging method for interpreting dementia caused by brain atrophy. Visual interpretation of brain MRI for atrophy is a qualitative procedure which un able to discriminate Alzheimer atrophy from aging brain atrophy. In recent years, Quantitative texture analysis of the medical imaging represent important biological information from pixels of the digital imaging for differential diseases discrimination. Quantitative texture analysis of the brain atrophy is not yet available for routine clinical use. The aim of this study is to evaluate performance of the applied automated texture analysis methods in discrimination Alzheimer versus normal aging by brain MRI.

In this approach, a total of 26 brain MRI (13 Alzheimer and 13 normal aging) images were analyzed By MaZda software. About 26 suitable regions of interest (ROI) were selected from hippocampal on MR images. Up to 270 texture features parameters were computed per ROI. The sets of 10 features parameters as a best differential descriptor are selected by applying Fisher and or POE+ACC algorithms. Under two standard / nonstandard states, both sets of features were discriminated by PCA, LDA and NDA. The confuse matrix applied for determination sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of applied texture analysis methods. The ROC cure analysis was used for examining the discrimination performance of the applied texture analysis methods.

In comparison with PCA and LDA, in general, NDA has the best result for discriminating Alzheimer from normal aging dementia with sensitivity 100%, specificity of 100% and accuracy 100%.

our results indicate that the computerize brain atrophy discrimination in MR image can be an auxiliary tool in diagnosing Alzheimer's in early stages.

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns about the possibility of reinfection, which could undermine global efforts to control the spread of the virus. Various factors are effective in the occurrence of re-infection of Covid-19 and studies have published different results in this regard. Therefore, the present study has been conducted in this direction and to compare the outcome of patients with re-infection & primary infection of COVID-19 and influencing factors.

The present study was conducted as a retrospective cohort. All the patients from the beginning of the epidemic until the End of June 2021, who were registered in the system of registering cases of COVID-19 in this province, were extracted. And finally, 18,401 patients with primary and recurrent infections were included in the study.

The results showed that women were more likely to get re-infection. It was also found that the age groups of 18-59 years and 0-4 years had the highest percentage of infections in patients with primary and reinfections, respectively. On the other hand, there is a significant relationship between people with primary infection and re-infection in terms of having a history of heart disease, kidney disease, and high blood pressure.

The results of this study showed that there is a statistically significant difference between the two groups of patients with primary infection and reinfection in terms of demographic variables, some risk factors, and clinical symptoms.

Kidney transplant patients are susceptible to various infectious diseases due to the use of immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection. Intestinal parasitic infections, particularly cryptosporidiosis, are significant parasitic diseases that can cause serious complications in these patients. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of intestinal parasites in patients receiving kidney transplants referred to the nephrology clinic of Imam Khomeini Hospital in Urmia.

Over a two-year period from 2021 to 2022, 257 stool samples were collected from patients with renal transplantation and examined using parasitological methods such as wet mount, Lugol's iodine, trichrome, and modified acid-fast stainings. A questionnaire was also completed, including demographic variables and gastrointestinal symptoms for each patient. The data was analyzed using SPSS software and the Chi-square test.

Of the 257 patients, 24 (9.3%) were infected with different intestinal protozoa. No cases of infection with intestinal parasitic worms were observed. The observed intestinal protozoa were as follows: Entamoeba coli (7, 2.7%), Blastocystis sp. (6, 2.3%), Endolimax nana (6, 2.3%), and Giardia lamblia (5, 1.9%). There were no positive cases for cryptosporidiosis and cystoisosporiasis among the patients.

According to the results of this study, opportunistic parasitic infections such as cryptosporidiosis were not observed in kidney transplant recipients. However, other pathogenic parasitic infections such as giardiasis and blastocystosis were present in these patients, albeit with a low prevalence.