Post stroke dementia and its putative risk factors: a hospital - based study

Introduction:Dementia is common after stroke and has a considerable impact on mortality, rehabilitation and quality of life. There are some published articles regarding post stroke dementia but there are many controversies surrounding this topic. Our aim was to identify the prevalence of post stroke dementia 3 months after stroke and evaluation of some its putative risk factors in Iranian population. Method: In this cross-sectional study, 151 patients with acute stroke were evaluated. The diagnosis was confirmed by physical examination and neuroimaging. Three months after the stroke, all patients were visited again. The diagnosis of post stroke dementia was made according to the criteria in the DSM-IV. Demographic data were collected using a questionnaire and data about lesion location and kind of stroke were obtained according to neuroimaging. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics, and chi-square test were used. Results: In our study, 47% patients were male and the rest were female. Thirty five (23.2%) of patients had post stroke dementia(PSD) after 3 months. 70.6 % of patients were 60 years old or more. 88.7% of patients had ischemic infarction and the rest had hemorrhagic stroke . The most frequent lesion locations were temporal, frontal and parietal lobes respectively., There was no significant statistical difference between PSD and sex, age, educational status, lesion location and kind of stroke. Conclusion: Our results show that a significant portion of patients with stroke are prone to PSD. The risk of dementia occurring after a stroke does not seem to be influenced by the stroke type

Investigating Prevalence of FOXP3 Gene Polymorphism in Multiple Sclerosis

Introduction: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating disease of central nervous system. Lack of regulation in inflammatory responses is considered to be a key element in the auto reactive immune response in MS. The FOXP3 transcription factor is predominantly expressed by the Treg cell lineage and appears to act as a master regulator of effector T cell activation. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the possible association between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in the FOXP3 gene and predisposition to MS. Methods: This case-control study consisted of 115 MS patients and 115 healthy controls, which were genotyped for the SNP rs 3761549. RFLP analysis was performed using AluI restriction enzyme. Results: The frequency of A allele was 15.6% in patients and 98.3% in normal controls (p=0.33). Moreover, allele G was identified as 98.1% in MS cases and 11.3 in controls. The rs 3761549(GG) was found in 84.3% of MS patients and in 88.7% of controls (p=0.33), rs 3761549 (AA) was found in 0.9% of MS cases and in 1.7% of controls (p=0.5), rs 3761549 (AG) was observed in 84.4% of MS cases and in 88.7% of controls (p=0.27). No significant difference was observed between patients and controls in regard with alleles and genotypes. Conclusion: The results of the present study suggest that the mentioned functional polymorphism is not likely to cause susceptibility to MS.( OR= 0.678 95% CI= 1.477-0.0319