The protective effect of Zataria multiflora Boiss. hydroalcoholic extract on TNF-α production, oxidative stress, and insulin level in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats

Objective: Oxidative stress leads to reactive oxygen species (ROS) overproduction, which causes tissue injury in diabetic patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of Zataria multiflora extract on TNF-α, oxidative stress products, and insulin levels as well as lipid profile in diabetic rats. Materials and Methods: Rats were randomly divided into 6 groups of 10 animals. Diabetes was induced by a single injection of streptozotocin (STZ). Control and diabetic control rats orally received 1 mL/day of normal saline, whereas the other three groups received 250, 500 and 1000 mg/kg/day of Z. multiflora extract, and one non-diabetic group orally received 1000 mg/kg/day Z. multiflora extract, for 28 days. At the end of the treatment course, rats were anesthetized and their serum samples were analyzed for TNF-α, malondialdehyde (MDA), super oxide dismutase (SOD), total antioxidant capacity (TAC), lipid profile, total plasma protein, blood glucose, insulin, and liver enzymes levels. Results: Our results showed that cholesterol, LDL, TG, MDA and TNF-α levels decreased, but HDL, SOD, TAC, and total protein increased significantly in the diabetic group receiving 1000 mg/kg Z. multiflora compared to the diabetic control group (

Effects of Stress Related Acute Exercise on Reconsolidation of Implicit Motor Memory in Women

Background and Aim: Stress is a powerful modulator of memory performance. Emotional arousal affects the various aspects of learning and memory through stimulation of the amygdala or the hippocampus. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of stress related acute exercise on reconsolidation of dart throwing task learned with errorless method. Materials and Methods: Participants of the study included 60 girls with an average age of 20.5 who were randomly assigned to three groups including: target (n = 20), control (n=20), and control 2 (n = 20). On the first day, all three groups under the same conditions acquired the skill of throwing darts in an errorless method and immediately after that performed the immediate retrieval. On the second day, after memory reactivation, the target group was exposed to stress resulting of acute exercise while the control 1 group did rest. The acute stress was presented to control 2 group without memory reactivation. During the experiment, changes in salivary cortisol were measured. On the third day, the delayed memory retrieval for each of the three groups was implemented. Findings: the results showed that while the control 1 and control 2 groups did not show enhancement of dart throwing learning across delayed memory retrieval than immediate retrieval, the target group showed substantial enhancement across the same time (p<0.05). Conclusion: Our findings indicate that acute stress after memory reactivation can facilitate the implicit motor memory reconsolidation in women

Association of anatomic variations with antrochoanal polyps in paranasal sinus computed tomography scan

Background: This study was designed to determine the prevalence of concomitant anatomic variation of paranasal sinuses in patients with antrochoanal polyp (ACP). Materials and Methods: Among patients referred by their clinicians for standard computed tomography scan of paranasal sinuses septal deviation, concha bullosa, and retention cyst were evaluated in both patients with ACP as well as in a control group. Results: Of the 17 patients with ACP, fifteen patients (88.2%) had septal deviation and two patients (11.8%) had concha bullosa. None of the patients with ACP had retention cyst or hypertrophic turbinate. Of the 78 patients in control group, twenty-nine (37.2%) had septal deviation, six (7.7%) had concha bullosa, seven (8.9%) had retention cyst, and one (1.2%) had hypertrophic turbinate. Septal deviation in patients with ACP has higher incidence (P < 0.001). Conclusion: This study showed that septal deviation is an anatomic variation which is significantly concomitant with ACP. Larger studies are needed to show the role of other anatomic variations in patients with ACP

Differential item functioning analysis using the SF-36 in patients with lumbar disc herniation: A quality of life research

Background: Differential item functioning (DIF) presents when individuals from different groups perceive the meaning of items differently in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaires. The aim of this study is to distinguish DIF in the SF-36 questionnaire and to determine its effect on comparison of HRQoL scores of lumbar disc herniation (LHD) patients and a healthy population. Methods: A total of 137 patients with LHD and 691 healthy individuals filled out the Persian version of the SF-36 questionnaire. The Rasch model was used to assess DIF for patients with LDH and a healthy population. Results:&nbsp; The presence of DIF was determined in 6 of 8 (75%) domain scores between patients with LDH and healthy individuals. Although half of the DIF was categorized as either negligible (3 out of 8; 37.5%), high DIF was observed in 3 out of 8 domains (37.5%). Gender was not flagged as important to DIF, with only 3 of 8 (37.5%) categorized as negligible. Conclusion: Because the use of the SF-36 questionnaire in HRQoL assessment between groups may not be invariant, caution should be used during comparison of HRQoL scores between heterogeneous groups

The effect of eight weeks of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) on the serum levels of chemerin, omentin-1 and apelin on overweight female Sprague-Dawley rats

Introdution: Adipokines play various biological roles, which are related to the following items, including body mass index changes, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, polycystic ovary syndrome, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of eight-weeks of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) on serum levels of chemerin, omentin-1 and apelin on overweight female Sprague-Dawley rats. Methods: In this study, 16 obese rats were randomly divided into two groups: 8 rats in the control group and 8 rats in the experimental group. For eight weeks, the experimental group did HIIT exercises based on an exercise program five days a week, while the control group had no training program. After eight weeks, an independent t-test was used for data analysis. Results: The results showed that there was no significant difference between chemerin serum levels in rats that had undergone an intensive exercise program as compared to the control group (p=0.079). On the other hand, there was a significant difference between serum levels of omentin-1 (P = 0.034) and apelin (P = 0.044). Conclusion: According to the results of the present study as well as the importance in adipokine level changes, it seems that HIIT exercise can be an important and useful factor for regulation of adipose tissue hormones (adipokines), and healthy and sick individuals can do this kind of activity according to their ability

An Emulator-Based Prediction of Dynamic Stiffness for Redundant Parallel Kinematic Mechanisms

The accuracy of a parallel kinematic mechanism (PKM) is directly related to its dynamic stiffness, which in turn is configuration dependent. For PKMs with kinematic redundancy, configurations with higher stiffness can be chosen during motion-trajectory planning for optimal performance. Herein, dynamic stiffness refers to the deformation of the mechanism structure, subject to dynamic loads of changing frequency. The stiffness-optimization problem has two computational constraints: (i) calculation of the dynamic stiffness of any considered PKM configuration, at a given task-space location, and (ii) searching for the PKM configuration with the highest stiffness at this location. Due to the lack of available analytical models, herein, the former subproblem is addressed via a novel effective emulator to provide a computationally efficient approximation of the high-dimensional dynamic-stiffness function suitable for optimization. The proposed method for emulator development identifies the mechanism\u27s structural modes in order to breakdown the high-dimensional stiffness function into multiple functions of lower dimension. Despite their computational efficiency, however, emulators approximating high-dimensional functions are often difficult to develop and implement due to the large amount of data required to train the emulator. Reducing the dimensionality of the approximation function would, thus, result in a smaller training data set. In turn, the smaller training data set can be obtained accurately via finite-element analysis (FEA). Moving least-squares (MLS) approximation is proposed herein to compute the low-dimensional functions for stiffness approximation. Via extensive simulations, some of which are described herein, it is demonstrated that the proposed emulator can predict the dynamic stiffness of a PKM at any given configuration with high accuracy and low computational expense, making it quite suitable for most high-precision applications. For example, our results show that the proposed methodology can choose configurations along given trajectories within a few percentage points of the optimal ones

Genetic Diversity in the G Protein Gene of Human Respiratory Syncytial Virus among Iranian Children with Acute Respiratory Symptoms

Objective: Acute respiratory infection (ARI) is the major cause of morbidity and mortality in children worldwide. Human respiratory syncytial virus (HRSV) is main viral agent of ARI in infants and young children in terms of effect and prevalence. The aim of this study was to investigate HRSV genotypes during one season in Iran. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 107 throat swabs were collected from children less than 5 years of age with acute respiratory infection from October to December 2009. The respiratory samples were obtained from several provinces: Tehran, Isfahan, Hamadan, Zanjan, Kordestan, Lorestan and West Azarbayjan, and were tested for G protein gene of HRSV by RT-PCR. Findings: Of the 107 respiratory samples, 24 (22.42%) were positive for HRSV, of which 16 (66.6%) belonged to subgroup A and 8 (33.4%) to subgroup B. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that subgroup A strains fell in two genotypes GA1 and GA2, whereas subgroup B strains clustered in genotype BA. Conclusion: This study revealed that multiple genotypes of HRSV cocirculated during the season 2009 in Iran. Also subgroup A strains were more prevalent than subgroup B strains, and genotype GA1 was predominant during the season

Introduction of a New Ionic Liquid Catalyst for the Trimethylsilyl and Tetrahydropyranyl Protection of Alcohols

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