Genetic polymorphism of cytochrome p450 (2C9) enzyme in Iranian Baluch ethnic group

The aim of the present study is to assess and compare the frequencies of the cytochrome P450 CYP2C9 variations in the Baluch ethnic group (n=110) with other ethnic groups. The allele frequencies of CYP2C9*1, CYP2C9*2 and CYP2C9*3 were 80.90%, 11.82% and 7.27%, respectively. 70.90%, 11.82%, 8.18%, 4.55%, 2.73% and 1.82% of subjects were with CYP2C9*1/*1, CYP2C9*1/*2, CYP2C9*1/*3, CYP2C9*2/*2, CYP2C9*2/*3 and CYP2C9*3/*3 genotypes, respectively. Different mutants may effect on prediction of drug dose requirements in different ethnic groups. Thus, CYP2C9 variants to be determined for findings high risk groups use optimal dosage of drugs metabolized by this polymorphic enzyme. © Tabari et al.; Licensee Bentham Open

Prevalence of metabolic syndrome in baluch women in Chabahar

Epidemiological studies have shown the importance of the metabolic syndrome. With estimation of the metabolic syndrome, it may predict cardiovascular disease, sudden death and the presence of some other cardiovascular risk factors. The aim of this study was to assess the metabolic syndrome among Baluch women. Our study consisted of 120 Baluch women. Baseline data of Baluch women, prevalence of metabolic syndrome and its components and distribution of body mass index were determined. The mean Body Mass Index (BMI), waist circumference, systolic blood pressure, triglyceride, High Density Lipoprotein-Cholesterol (HDL-Chol.) and fasting blood glucose levels were significantly higher in the subjects with metabolic syndrome. The prevalence of HDL-cholesterol, high triglyceride, high fasting glucose levels, high waist circumference and high blood pressure were shown to be 33.3, 20.8, 12.5, 11.8 and 2.5, respectively. HDL-cholesterol (33.3) and high triglyceride levels (20.8) were the most frequent characteristics of metabolic components. The prevalence of subject with normal weight, overweight and obese BMIs were 77.5, 15 and 7.5, respectively. About 9.17, 4.17 and 4.17 of Baluch women had three, four and five criteria of metabolic syndrome components, respectively. This study reveals that there is a significant difference in the metabolic syndrome components in patients with and without metabolic syndrome. The prevalence of HDL-cholesterol and high triglyceride in Baluch women was highest. Definition of metabolic syndrome may help physicians to estimate, decrease and prevent coronary heart disease and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in subjects with metabolic syndrome. © 2015 Asian Network for Scientific Information

Altered levels of nodal excitability by rate-dependent inhibitory effects of essential oil of Citrus aurantium on the electrophysiological properties of isolated perfused rabbit AV-Node. Protective role in the prevention of ouabain toxicity [Alteración de los niveles de excitabilidad nodal por efectos inhibitorios velocidad-dependiente del aceite esencial de Citrus aurantium sobre las propiedades electrofisiológicas del nodo AV aislado y perfundido de conejo. Papel protector en la prevención de toxicidad por ouabaína]

Treatment of supraventricular arrhythmia includes a wide range of medical interventions. Herbal remedies are suitable alternatives to synthetic drugs due to their availability, minimal side effects and lower price. Pharmacological studies and traditional medical literature point to the cardiovascular effects of Citrus aurantium L. (Rutaceae) in many instances. In the present study we used isolated perfused AV-node of rabbit as an experimental model to determine the effect of various concentrations of essential oil of C. aurantium (0.1-0.3 v/v) on the nodal conduction time and refractoriness of an isolated rabbit AV-nodal preparations. Selective stimulation protocols were used to independently quantify AV nodal recovery, facilitation and fatigue in 18 rabbits. Our results showed concentration-dependent and rate-independent suppressive effects of essence of C. aurantium on the Wenchebach cycle length (WBCL), AV Conduction Time (AVCT) and effective and functional refractory periods (ERP & FRP). Functional properties such as facilitation and fatigue were significantly increased by this plant. Citrus aurantium plays a protective role against the toxic effects of ouabaine by increasing AV nodal conduction time and refractoriness. The above results indicated differential effects of C. aurantium on slow and fast pathways, with a dominant role on fast pathways. This research has explained the protective role of C. aurantium on ouabaine toxicity. All results indicated the potential anti-arrhythmic effects of C. aurantium in treating supraventricular tachyarrhythmia

The Remarkable Beneficial Effect of Adding Oral Simvastatin to Topical Betamethasone for Treatment of Psoriasis: A Double-blind, Randomized, Placebo-controlled Study

Psoriasis is a common chronic inflammatory disease with unpredictableprognosis. Given the immunomodulatory effects of statins, the present study was conducted to determine whether the addition of orally administered simvastatin to the topical betamethasone, a standard antipsoriatic treatment, can produce a more powerful therapeutic response against this clinical conundrum.In a double-blind study, 30 patients with plaque type psoriasis were randomly divided into two equal treatment groups. Group 1 received oralsimvastatin (40 mg/d) plus topical steroid (50% betamethasone in petrolatum) for 8 weeks and group 2 received oral placebo plus the same topical steroid for the same time period. Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) score was checked before and at the end of the treatment period.PASI score decreased significantly in both groups, but the decline of PASI score was more significant in patients who received simvastatin(Mann-Whitney test; P-value=0.001). No side effect or any laboratory abnormality was detected in patients.Our work, which is the first doubleblind, randomized, placebo-controlled study on this subject, shows that oral simvastatin enhances the therapeutic effect of topical steroids against psoriasis. The increased risk of cardiovascular accidents in psoriatic patients and the protective effect of statins against cardiovascular disease further encourages their use in the treatment of this clinical conundrum.Keywords: Simvastatin – Psoriasis – Treatment – Topical Steroid

CEQE: Contextualized Embeddings for Query Expansion

In this work we leverage recent advances in context-sensitive language models to improve the task of query expansion. Contextualized word representation models, such as ELMo and BERT, are rapidly replacing static embedding models. We propose a new model, Contextualized Embeddings for Query Expansion (CEQE), that utilizes query-focused contextualized embedding vectors. We study the behavior of contextual representations generated for query expansion in ad-hoc document retrieval. We conduct our experiments on probabilistic retrieval models as well as in combination with neural ranking models. We evaluate CEQE on two standard TREC collections: Robust and Deep Learning. We find that CEQE outperforms static embedding-based expansion methods on multiple collections (by up to 18% on Robust and 31% on Deep Learning on average precision) and also improves over proven probabilistic pseudo-relevance feedback (PRF) models. We further find that multiple passes of expansion and reranking result in continued gains in effectiveness with CEQE-based approaches outperforming other approaches. The final model incorporating neural and CEQE-based expansion score achieves gains of up to 5% in P@20 and 2% in AP on Robust over the state-of-the-art transformer-based re-ranking model, Birch

The effect of HESA-A (natural drug) on visual acuity in age related macular degeneration: a randomized double blind controlled clinical trial

We investigated the clinical efficacy and safety of HESA-A (a drug of herbal-marine origin) in the treatment of age related macular degeneration (AMD). In a randomized double blind clinical trial 280 eyes of 280 (157 F, 123 M) patients with wet and dry AMD were randomly assigned in treatment or placebo groups. Patients in treatment group received HESA-A tablet 25 mg/Kg twice a day orally and controls received placebo with the same method for 4 weeks. Visual acuity at baseline and after one month of treatment was measured and compared between two groups. All patients were followed up for 5 months after treatment. Mean patients’ age was 69.06±8.49 years. At the end of study visual acuity improved significantly from 1.69±0.65 LogMar to 1.03± 0.40 LogMar in treatment group but not in controls (P: 0.000 and P: 0.67 in treatment and control groups respectively). No drug reaction or recurrence was reported during the study and 5-month post treatment follow up period in HESA-A treated group. This study showed significant efficacy and safety of HESA-A in improvement of visual acuity in AMD patients in short term.Key words: age related macular degeneration, HESA-A

Antenna-filter-antenna-based cell for linear-to-circular polarizer transmit-array

In this paper, we propose a dual-band linear-to-circular polarization converter element based on the antenna-filter-antenna (AFA) structure. The traits of this cell include thin three-layer structure and ability to convert a linear incident wave to two orthogonal circular polarizations at two non-adjacent frequency bands. This combination of physical and electrical specifications makes this cell a novel solution. An example of this cell suitable for satellite communication is designed to operate at 20GHz and 30GHz (satellite Ka-band) with 4% and 8% bandwidth, respectively.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio