SOX2OT lncRNA Inhibition Suppresses the Stemness Characteristics of Esophageal Tumorspheres

Background: SOX2OT is a novel cancer associated long non-coding RNA (LncRNA) with higher expression in variable tumor tissues, including esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). It also plays an important function in embryonic neuronal development. Regarding its function in both stemness and carcinogenesis, here, we aimed to investigate its expression and function in tumorspheres of the esophagus using the RNAi method. Material & Methods: Two esophageal squamous cancer cells (ESCC): KYSE30 and YM1 cells were used for sphere enrichment. Cells were transfected with SOX2OT targeting and control siRNA. The size and the number of spheres were measured using light microscopy. Gene expression of the pluripotency genes was measured by qRT-PCR and docetaxel chemoresistance was assessed by MTS viability assay. Results: Our findings showed that ESCC tumorspheres overexpress SOX2OT gene along with other stemness genes (SOX2, OCT4A, and Nanog) compared to their original cancer cells. RNAi experiments indicated that SOX2OT knockdown can suppress the stemness-related gene expression, sphere formation ability (both size and number), and docetaxel resistance as three of the main cancer stem cell characteristics of tumorspheres. Conclusion: Altogether our results showed the regulatory role of SOX2OT in pluripotency and stemness in ESCC tumorspheres. Our results suggest a potential application of SOX2OT inhibition in combination with docetaxel for ESCC inhibition in vitro. © 2022 by the authors

Prediction of Quality of Life Using Dermatology Life Quality Index in Iranian Patients with Neurofibromatosis Type 1

Background: Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), a genetic condition most commonly characterized by the presence of dermal neurofibromas and café au lait macules, has a significant impact upon the Quality of Life (QoL). The purpose of this study is to predict the QoL with Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) in Iranian patients with neurofibromatosis type 1. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 223 patients with neurofibromatosis type 1 using available sampling. Data collection tools were demographic information form, SF-36 and DLQI questionnaires. Quality of life was predicted by DLQI. Linear and multiple regression tests were utilized to analyze the data. Results: Predicting the quality of life by dermatology quality of life showed that the physical function by the variable �work and school� and treatment, role limitations due to physical health by the variable of work and school, the role limitations due to emotional problems by the variable of treatment, emotional well-being by the variable of interpersonal relationships, pain by the variable of symptoms and feelings, daily activities, and personal relationships were predictable. Finally, social function, general health and fatigue cannot be predicted by any variable. Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that the quality of dermatology life is able to predict some aspects of quality of life. These findings can be used to provide better health services to this group of patients and improve their quality of life. Copyright © 2022, Journal of Iranian Medical Council. All rights reserved

Statistical modeling optimization for antibiotics decomposition by ultrasound/electro-Fenton integrated process: Non-carcinogenic risk assessment of drinking water

The present work proposes an ultrasound (US) assisted electro-Fenton (EF) process for eliminating penicillin G (PNG) and ciprofloxacin (CIP) from aqueous solutions and the process was further optimized by response surface methodology (RSM)- Box-Behnken design (BBD). The impact of pH, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) concentration, applied voltage, initial pollutant concentration, and operating time were studied. The capability application of the electro-Fenton (EF) and US processes was compared separately and in combination under the optimum conditions of pH of 4, a voltage of 15 V, the initial antibiotic concentration of 20.7 mg/L, H2O2 concentration of 0.8 mg/L, and the operating time of 75 min. The removal efficiency of PNG and CIP using the sono-electro-Fenton (SEF) process, as the results revealed, was approximately 96 and 98, respectively. The experiments on two scavengers demonstrated that �OH contributes significantly to the CIP and PNG degradation by SEF, whereas �O�2 corresponds to only a negligible amount. The total organic carbon (TOC) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) analyses were used to assess the mineralization of CIP and PNG. The efficiency of COD and TOC removal was reached at 73.25 and 62.5 for CIP under optimized operating circumstances, and at 61.52 and 72 for PNG, respectively. These findings indicate that a sufficient rate of mineralization was obtained by SEF treatment for the mentioned pollutants. The reaction kinetics of CIP and PNG degradation by the SEF process were found to follow a pseudo-first-order kinetic model. In addition, the human health risk assessment of natural water containing CIP and PNG that was purified by US, EF, and SEF processes was done for the first time. According to the findings, the non-carcinogenic risk (HQ) caused by drinking purified water by all three systems was calculated in the acceptable range. Thus, SEF is a proper system to remove various antibiotics in potable water and reduces their human health risks. © 202

Anesthesia and analgesia for common research models of adult mice

Anesthesia and analgesia are major components of many interventional studies on laboratory animals. However, various studies have shown improper reporting or use of anesthetics/analgesics in research proposals and published articles. In many cases, it seems �anesthesia� and �analgesia� are used interchangeably, while they are referring to two different concepts. Not only this is an unethical practice, but also it may be one of the reasons for the proven suboptimal quality of many animal researches. This is a widespread problem among investigations on various species of animals. However, it could be imagined that it may be more prevalent for the most common species of laboratory animals, such as the laboratory mice. In this review, proper anesthetic/analgesic methods for routine procedures on laboratory mice are discussed. We considered the available literature and critically reviewed their anesthetic/analgesic methods. Detailed dosing and pharmacological information for the relevant drugs are provided and some of the drugs� side effects are discussed. This paper provides the necessary data for an informed choice of anesthetic/analgesic methods in some routine procedures on laboratory mice. © 2022, The Author(s)

Highly Conserve Sequences in Envelope, Nucleoprotein and RNA-Dependent RNA Polymerase of SARS-CoV-2 in Nasopharyngeal Samples of the COVID-19 Patients; a Diagnostic Target for Further Studies

Background: The etiological agent of coronavirus diseases 2019 (COVID-19) is severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Conventional molecular methods are used to detect viruses in COVID-19 infected patients. This study aimed to investigate escape mutations from molecular detection on SARS-CoV-2 targeted genes, which indicates the importance of mutations in false-negative PCR test results in the detection of virus in clinical specimens of patients with COVID-19. Materials and Methods: The 20 nasopharyngeal swabs samples collected from COVID-19 confirmed patients. The SARS-CoV-2 E, nsp12, and N genetic regions are amplified by RT-PCR assay. PCR products were sequenced using the Sanger sequencing method and Multiple sequence alignment (MSA) to assess the polymorphism and mutations performed using MEGA X software and the Maximum likelihood method for the phylogenetic evaluation. Results: Among all COVID-19 cases, 60 and 40 were male and female, respectively. The MSA showed high conservation between all evaluated samples and VOCs in all N, E, and nsp12 genes. Also, the phylogenetic evaluation by the Maximum likelihood method reported high similarity between all SARS-CoV-2 sequenced samples, VOCs, and Wuhan reference sequences in the evaluated region. Conclusion: Our study results approved the relatively conserved suitability of the E, N, and RdRp-gene regions with no diversity, therefore, making them perfect candidates for first-line screening. © 2022 The authors

Correction: Psychometric properties of Persian version of diabetes health literacy scale (DHLS) in patients with type 2 diabetes (Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome, (2022), 14, 1, (139), 10.1186/s13098-022-00910-0)

Following publication of the original article 1, the author identified an error in the first author�s affiliation. The incorrect affiliation: Mahdi Moshki Department of Health Education and Health Promotion, School of Health, Social Development and Health Promotion Research Center, Gonabad University of Medical Sciences, Gonabad, Iran The correct affiliation for first author: Mahdi Moshki Department of Health Education and Health Promotion, School of Health, Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Gonabad University of Medical Sciences, Gonabad, Iran The original article 1 has been revised. © 2022, The Author(s)

Decreased Serum Selenium Levels of COVID-19 Patients in Comparison with Healthy Individuals

Background: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic and is the cause of increased mortality, especially among elderly patients and those who have severe complications, such as chronic pulmonary obstruction, hypertension, diabetes, and cancer. Nutrition, especially micronutrients, plays an important role in reducing mortality and complications from COVID-19 because micronutrients strengthen our immune system and nutritional status is an important factor that affects the outcome of patients with COVID-19. Among micronutrients, selenium has an important effect on both intrinsic and acquired immunity. Host selenium deficiency affects the viral genome and increases the virulence of viruses. We have investigated the serum selenium levels in COVID-19 patients and healthy control individuals. Methods: A total of 50 patients with COVID-19 infection were included in this study. During hospitalization, 13 patients died (non-survivor group) and 37 patients recovered (survivor group). We assessed the serum selenium levels in 50 COVID-19 patients and 50 healthy individuals by Agilent SpectrAA-240 Z atomic absorption spectrometer. Results: The serum selenium level was significantly lower in COVID-19 patients (77. 8 ± 13.9 μg/L) as compared to healthy control individuals (91.7 ± 16.7 μg/L), but there was no significant difference between the survivor and non-survivor groups. Also, there was no significant relationship between serum selenium levels and laboratory findings of COVID-19 patients. Conclusions: These results suggest that decreased serum selenium levels may be a risk factor for the COVID-19 infection, but there was no significant relationship between selenium and severity and mortality of COVID-19 disease. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

Onset of Mucormycosis in Patients with COVID-19: A Systematic Review on Patients' Characteristics

Mucormycosis has a significant impact on patients' standard of living and, therefore, a high clinical suspicion, prediagnosis, and rapid treatment are critical in easing patients' suffering and fast recovery. Our focus is to conduct an organized review based on various variables on the patients' characteristics having mucormycosis in severe novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We examined Embase, PubMed-Medline, LitCovid, Web of Science, Scopus, and the reference lists of included case reports up to September 20, 2021, using the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) phrases and other keywords related to this topic. Subsequently, we investigated associated comorbidities, patient characteristics, position of mucormycosis, steroids use, body involvements, and outcomes. Overall, 77 studies were conducted and among these, 72 studies mentioned that the patients' age to be 48.13±14.33 (mean±standard deviation SD) years. Diabetes mellitus (DM) was reported in 77.9% (n =60) of cases. Studies showed that central nervous system (CNS) and bone involvement were reported in 62.3 (n =48) and 53.2% (n =41), respectively. More fatalities were observed in patients with mucormycosis with the active form of COVID-19. Also, men infected with mucormycosis significantly affected by COVID-19. In the end, mortality was higher in males with mucormycosis. As a result, a solid investigation into the root cause of mucormycosis, especially in COVID-19, should be included in the study plan. If the patient is COVID-19-positive and immunosuppressed, this opportunistic pathogen diagnostic test should not be overlooked. © 2022 Georg Thieme Verlag. All rights reserved

Opium use and risk of lung cancer: A multicenter case-control study in Iran

Opium use was recently classified as a human carcinogen for lung cancer by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. We conducted a large, multicenter case-control study evaluating the association between opium use and the risk of lung cancer. We recruited 627 cases and 3477 controls from May 2017 to July 2020. We used unconditional logistic regression analyses to estimate the odds ratios (OR) and 95 confidence intervals (CI) and measured the association between opium use and the risk of lung cancer. The ORs were adjusted for the residential place, age, gender, socioeconomic status, cigarettes, and water pipe smoking. We found a 3.6-fold risk of lung cancer for regular opium users compared to never users (95 CI: 2.9, 4.6). There was a strong dose-response association between a cumulative count of opium use and lung cancer risk. The OR for regular opium use was higher for small cell carcinoma than in other histology (8.3, 95 CI: 4.8, 14.4). The OR of developing lung cancer among opium users was higher in females (7.4, 95 CI: 3.8, 14.5) than in males (3.3, 95 CI: 2.6, 4.2). The OR for users of both opium and tobacco was 13.4 (95 CI: 10.2, 17.7) compared to nonusers of anything. The risk of developing lung cancer is higher in regular opium users, and these results strengthen the conclusions on the carcinogenicity of opium. The association is stronger for small cell carcinoma cases than in other histology. © 2022 UICC

Facile method to covalently-jointed ZnO-NPs with Chitosan by using GPTMS: a new strategy to decrease the cytotoxicity of ZnO-NPs

In the present study, a combination of Zinc Oxide- (3-Glycidyloxypropyl)trimethoxysilane- Chitosan (ZnO-GPTMS-CS) nano-hybrid were fabricated by modifying the surface of ZnO-NPs and combining it with CS to investigate the influence of surface modification on the thermal stability and cell viability of the nanoparticles. The properties of the prepared samples including surface modification of ZnO-NPs (ZnO-GPTMS-NPs) and the ZnO-GPTMS-CS nano-hybrid were investigated by different techniques. The ZnO-GPTMS-CS nano-hybrid exhibited high thermal stability in comparison to CS and modified ZnO (ZnO-GPTMS). Moreover, the cytotoxicity assay showed that ZnO-GPTMS-CS nano-hybrid had excellent cell viability compared to ZnO-NPs and ZnO-GPTMS in different concentrations. Especially considered in regard to 50 μg/ml of nano-hybrid, cell survival remained more than 90 after 48 hours of incubation. Thus, the results indicated that ZnO-NPs reacted with GPTMS and CS has a great potential to be used in biological applications. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group