Teratogenic effects of carbamazepine on embryonic eye development in pregnant mice

Background: Carbamazepine is an antiepileptic drug used widely for the treatment of epileptic seizures and neuropathic pain. Several malformations in humans, mainly neural tube defects, have been reported as a consequence of its use during pregnancy. The association between maternal use of carbamazepine and congenital eye malformations is not very well understood. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine this association after intraperitoneal injection of carbamazepine during the period of organogenesis in mice. Methods: Balb/c timed-pregnant mice were divided into 4 experimental and control groups. Two experimental groups received daily intraperitoneal injections of 15mg/kg (group I) or 30mg/kg (group II) of carbamazepine on gestational days 6 to 15. Two control groups received normal saline or Tween 20 (polysorbate 20). Dams underwent Cesarean section on gestational day 18 and embryos were harvested. External examination for eye malformations, routine histological processing of malformed fetuses to study eye morphology, and skeletal staining were performed. Results: The mean weight and crown-rump of the fetuses in both experimental groups were significantly reduced compared with those of the control groups. Various malformations were detected such as brachygnathia, calvarial deformity, vertebral deformity, short tail, and brachydactyly. Premature opening of one or both eyes with mild to severe exophthalmos occurred in the 2 experimental groups. Deformed lens, retinal folds with undeveloped layers, and corneal folds with absence of surface epithelium were detected in both experimental groups. Conclusions: This study, to the best of our knowledge, showed for the first time that intraperitoneal administration of carbamazepine at clinically comparable doses during organogenesis can induce several eye malformations in mice. The implication of these results needs to be considered when carbamazepine is administered during human pregnancy. © 2010 Informa UK Ltd

Presenting a Model in the Analysis of the Database Interface Environment in Support of Users\' Information-Seeking Behavior

Background and purpose: User interface environments of databases should be designed in such a way that, in addition to facilitating users' information-seeking behavior, they can provide appropriate strategies to solve their problems in the shortest possible time. The user interface allows users to get a proper understanding of the information base and they can take advantage of it. The closer the design of the user interface is to the mental patterns and information-seeking behavior of the users, the more effective and useful it is and the less the user's efforts. Despite the development of medical information technology in the field of user interface design, most medical information systems have not been able to meet users' expectations mainly due to: a lack of awareness of information needs, information behavior of users, and lack of understanding of its nature. This research aims to present a new model for effective information retrieval and increasing the desirability in the design of user interface environments of information databases. Materials and methods: This study is a mixed type with a quantitative and qualitative approach which has been done with the design of combined exploratory methods. In the qualitative part, the research community included expert professors and specialists, and in the quantitative part, specialized and research-oriented PhD students of the basic science fields of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. In the qualitative part, 12 people were included in the study with the purposeful sampling method, and with this number of interviews, information saturation occurred. In the quantitative part, stratified random sampling was used and 100 people were included in the study. The required data was collected through content analysis and researcher-developed questionnaires. The data was then analyzed using SPSS software version 22 and inferential statistics (Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Wilcoxon, Mann-Whitney, and structural analysis). Results: According to the IPMA analysis, the findings of the research showed that among the variables that explain the desirable information-seeking behavior in terms of importance, the highest rank in desirable information-seeking behaviors is related to the dimension of users' position with an emphasis on ability (with a significance coefficient of 0.437 and the lowest is related to the ease of access component (with a significance coefficient of 0.048) and in terms of performance, the highest rating is related to the user interface design dimension with an emphasis on the database efficiency variable (with a performance factor of 57.191) and the lowest was related to the ease component (with a performance factor of 40.793). Also, the proposed model was able to obtain the necessary validity and reliability. Conclusion: The presented model helps users of database user interface environments so that they can use the basic elements as much as possible to speed up work and save time. Also, the proposed model can provide the necessary ideas to the designers of database environments so that they can implement the appropriate features for better interaction with the databases to facilitate and understand as easily as possible for more users. considering that the proposed model has obtained the necessary validity and reliability, it can be claimed that this model will not only be able to answer the issues raised in the field of searching and retrieving information, but it can be used, criticized, and perfected in future researches as a basis for designing and implementing user interface environments