THE RELATIONSHIP OF MARITAL ADJUSTMENT AND SEXUAL FUNCTION WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS AFFECTING TREATMENT IN INFERTILE WOMEN

Abstract. Infertility is one of the most importantissues of reproductive health that has prominent effects on psychological and social aspects of couple's life. Infertility causes women’s concern about their sexual attractiveness and also their physical and mental health, It is even possible that using assisted reproductive technologies have negative effects on women’s feelings of the sexual values and marital relationships. This study therefore aimed to investigate the relationship of marital adjustment and sexual function with psychological factors affecting treatment in infertile women in 2013 in Mashhad, Iran. This correlational study was performed on 130 infertile women referred to Montaserie Infertility Research Center, Mashhad who selected using convenient sampling. Research tools were consisted of demographic questionnaires including personal and infertility-related information, and valid and reliable ROSEN Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI),Spanier Marital Adjustment Scale(DAS) and Goldbergand Hillier General Health Questionnaire, which were completed by the subjects. Data analysis was carried out by SPSS software using t-test,one way ANOVA, Spearman and Pearson correlation tests. The mean score of awareness of infertility and the length of infertility treatment were 5.24±4.12 and 4±3.95 years, respectively. The cause of infertility in 46.9% was a female factor and in 38.7% a male factor. General health in 49.2% of the infertile women were good. 54.6% of the infertile women had poor sexual function and 76.9% had high maritaladjustment. There was a direct correlation between sexual function and marital adjustment with general health in infertile women (P<0.001).A significantrelationship was also seen between sexual function and spouse accompany during treatment (P<0.05). Also a direct correlation was found between marital adjustment and being hopeful to treatment success and also spouse accompany during treatment in infertile women (P<0.05). The findings showed that infertile women with improved sexual function and good marital adjustment will have better mental health and are more hopeful toinfertility treatment . These results can be incorporated in planning of training and counseling programs, specially for infertile women who suffer from psychological disorders

Effect of telephone counseling on continuity and duration of breastfeeding among primiparus women

Background & Aim: Breast milk provides many healthy nutrients to infants. Support provided by health care provider has positive effects on duration of breastfeeding. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of telephone counseling on continuity and duration of breastfeeding among primiparus women. Methods & Materials: This clinical trial was conducted on 140 primiparus women referred to the selected health centers of Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2010. The participants were randlomly allocated into two equal groups (each: 70 indviduals). The participants in the intervention group received telephone counseling by one of the researchers. The control group received routine care. Data were collected using a questionnaire including demographic characteristics and a breastfeeding check list. Exclusive breastfeeding rates were recorded one and three months after childbirth in both groups. Also, the continuity and duration of exclusive breastfeeding were recored three months after childbirth in both groups. Data were analyzed using the Chi-square test, Fisher's exact test, standard logistic regression and linear regression in the SPSS-16 and the Win Pepi. Results: The average duration of exclusive breastfeeding in the intervention group (8.05±3.99) was significantly more than the control group (6.23±4.03) (P=0.008). In the third month of delivery, continuity of exclusive breastfeeding in the intervention group was more than the control group (P=0.03). Results also showed that telephone counseling was effective in the duration of exclusive breastfeeding (P=0.02). Conclusion: Telephone counseling was effective in continuity and duration of exclusive breastfeeding. Using this inexpensive and easy method can help to increase exclusive breastfeeding, especially in primiparus women

Impact of natural disasters on blood safety

Abstract Background and Objectives The use of blood and blood products is one of the necessities of clinics. Blood donation should comply with international criteria because of the probability of transmission of infections following blood transfusion. One of the priorities in reliable blood transfusion centers in the world and in our country will be the improvement of the donor recruitment methods. It seems that recent methods are useful in non-emergencies. The use of such methods in emergency cases like what happened in Bam earthquake is practically impossible. This study aims to see if this would endanger blood safety. Materials and Methods In this cross-sectional study, 4188 blood units including 2094 blood units collected (as case group) immediately after Bam earthquake and 2094 units collected (as control group) before Bam earthquake were studied. In this process all blood units in the case and control groups were tested for HBV, HCV and HIV by Elisa method. We repeated positive results by Elisa. If test results were positive again, we would use confirmation tests (western blot and RIBA). Results The results show that there is a significant difference in Binomial test between control and case group (PV<0.001) for HBV and HCV before and after Bam earthquake however, no difference was observed for HIV between two groups. Conclusions Higher rate of serologically positive results in case group shows that there is a higher risk in emergencies for transmission of viral infections. To decrease this risk, it is proposed that blood donation is managed by implementing control mechanisms in emergency conditions

The Efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Group-Therapy Alone and plus Family Psycho-Education on the Treatment of Major Depression Disorder Symptoms in Females

Abstract: Background & Aims: Major depression is one of the common psychiatric disorders imposing negative effects on patients and their families. There are several treatment methods for depression. The purpose of the present study was to determine the effect of combination of cognitive behavioral group therapy, family psycho-education and medication versus medication alone on the improvement of major depression disorder. Methods: This study was a clinical trial in which using convenience sampling 60 patients with major depression admitted in Hajar Hospital Shahrekord /Iran were randomly selected. The patients were randomly allocated into three groups (n=20). The first group underwent medication therapy as well as cognitive behavioral group therapy. The second group received medication therapy, cognitive behavioral group therapy and family psycho-education. The third group, served as the control group, only received medication therapy. Beck Depression Inventory II was applied to all three groups before and after therapeutic interventions. Results: Our findings indicate a significant difference between control group and both cognitive behavioral group therapy and family psycho-education after therapeutic interventions. In other words, while both cognitive behavioral group therapy and family psycho-education groups showed significant difference with medication therapy group, no significant difference was found between cognitive behavioral group therapy and family psycho-education group. Conclusion: Medication therapy accompanied by cognitive behavioral therapies and family psycho-education is more efficient in improving depression symptoms compared to pure medication therapy. Keywords: Major, Depressive disorder, Drug theraphy, Psychotherapy, Cognitive therapy, Wome

Handwriting style classification

This paper describes an independent handwriting style classifier that has been designed to select the best recognizer for a given style of writing. For this purpose a definition of handwriting legibility has been defined and a method implemented that can predict this legibility. The technique consists of two phases. In the feature-extraction phase, a set of 36 features is extracted from the image contour. In the classification phase, two nonparametric classification techniques are applied to the extracted features in order to compare their effectiveness in classifying words into legible, illegible, and middle classes. In the first method, a multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) is used to transform the space of extracted features (36 dimensions) into an optimal discriminant space for a nearest mean based classifier. In the second method, a probabilistic neural network (PNN) based on the Bayes strategy and nonparametric estimation of probability density function is used. The experimental results show that the PNN method gives superior classification results when compared with the MDA method. For the legible, illegible, and middle handwriting the method provides 86.5% (legible/illegible), 65.5% (legible/middle), and 90.5% (middle/illegible) correct classification for two classes. For the three-class legibility classification the rate of correct classification is 67.33% using a PNN classifier

The effect of quinapril on the aortic contractile response of streptozotocin-diabetic rats

Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors appear to correct many of the abnormalities associated with the vascular dysfunction found in diabetic patients. In this respect, quinapril is a unique ACE inhibitor with multiple protective effects. The present study was carried out to investigate the effect of intraperitoneal administration of quinapril on the aortic reactivity of streptozotocin (STZ)-diabetic rats. For this purpose, male Wistar rats received one injection of streptozotocin (STZ), 60 mg/kg, to induce diabetes. Three days after STZ injection, rats were treated with quinapril (2 mg/kg/day) for 4 weeks, after that aortic reactivity to vasoactive agents were compared with those of untreated diabetic rats or non-diabetic control rats. For this purpose, contractile response to phenylephrine (PE) was obtained from aortic rings. Concentration-response curves from quinapril-treated diabetic rats to PE in the presence and absence of endothelium were attenuated as compared to vehicle-treated diabetics. Therefore, the 4-week treatment of diabetic rats with quinapril could prevent the functional changes in vascular reactivity in diabetic rats

Introducing an algorithm for use to hide sensitive association rules through perturb technique

Due to the rapid growth of data mining technology, obtaining private data on users through this technology becomes easier. Association Rules Mining is one of the data mining techniques to extract useful patterns in the form of association rules. One of the main problems in applying this technique on databases is the disclosure of sensitive data by endangering security and privacy. Hiding the association rules is one of the methods to preserve privacy and it is a main subject in the field of data mining and database security, for which several algorithms with different approaches are presented so far. An algorithm to hide sensitive association rules with a heuristic approach is presented in this article, where the Perturb technique based on reducing confidence or support rules is applied with the attempt to remove the considered item from a transaction with the highest weight by allocating weight to the items and transactions. Efficiency is measured by the failure criteria of hiding, number of lost rules and ghost rules, and execution time. The obtained results of this study are assessed and compared with two known FHSAR and RRLR algorithms, based on two real databases (dense and sparse). The results indicate that the number of lost rules in all experiments are reduced by 47% in comparison with RRLR and reduced by 23% in comparison with FHSAR. Moreover, the other undesirable side effects, in this proposed algorithm in the worst case are equal to that of the base algorithms

Association of the p53 Codon 72 Polymorphism with Colorectal Cancer in South West of Iran

Abstract—The p53 tumor suppressor gene plays two important roles in genomic stability: blocking cell proliferation after DNA damage until it has been repaired, and starting apoptosis if the damage is too critical. Codon 72 exon4 polymorphism (Arg72Pro) of the P53 gene has been implicated in cancer risk. Various studies have been done to investigate the status of p53 at codon 72 for arginine (Arg) and proline (Pro) alleles in different populations and also the association of this codon 72 polymorphism with various tumors. Our objective was to investigate the possible association between P53 Arg72Pro polymorphism and susceptibility to colorectal cancer among Isfahan and Chaharmahal Va Bakhtiari (a part of south west of Iran) population. We investigated the status of p53 at codon 72 for Arg/Arg, Arg/Pro and Pro/Pro allele polymorphisms in blood samples from 145 colorectal cancer patients and 140 controls by Nested-PCR of p53 exon 4 and digestion with BstUI restriction enzyme and the DNA fragments were then resolved by electrophoresis in 2% agarose gel. The Pro allele was 279 bp, while the Arg allele was restricted into two fragments of 160 and 119 bp. Among the 145 colorectal cancer cases 49 cases (33.79%) were homozygous for the Arg72 allele (Arg/Arg), 18 cases (12.41%) were homozygous for the Pro72 allele (Pro/Pro) and 78 cases (53.8%) found in heterozygous (Arg/Pro). In conclusion, it can be said that p53Arg/Arg genotype may be correlated with possible increased risk of this kind of cancers in south west of Ira

Antinociceptive effect of Teucrium polium leaf extract in the diabetic rat formalin test

This Study was designed to evaluate the analgesic effect of Teucrium polium leaf extract in the diabetic rat formalin test. For this purpose, streptozotocin (STZ)-diabetic rats received intraperitoneal injection of this extract (100 and 200 mg/kg per day) for a period of 2 weeks. It was found out that Teucrium polium-treated diabetic rats exhibited a lower nociceptive score as compared to untreated diabetics. The results may suggest therapeutic potential of Teucrium polium extract for the treatment of diabetic hyperalgesia. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved

Quinapril attenuates the effect of long-term L-NAME administration on the vascular reactivity of diabetic rats

Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors including quinapril could exert a protective effect on cardiovascular system through endothelial system in normoglycemic and diabetic rats. The present experimental work was designed to study the vascular reactivity of aortic ring segments isolated from streptozotocin (STZ)-diabetic rats treated for 4 weeks with nitro-L-arginine- methyl ester (L-NAME; 50 mg/100 ml) or L-NAME plus quinapril (10 mg/100 ml) in drinking water. The results showed that quinapril treatment significantly attenuated the augmented contractile response to phenylephrine and KCl in diabetic rats. In addition, quinapril treatment partially restored the reduced contractile response in diabetic animals treated chronically with L-NAME. It can be concluded that quinapril could partly counteract the effect of long-term L-NAME administration on vascular reactivity in STZ-diabetic rats