Asthma and COPD: Smoking, Atopy and Corticosteroid responsiveness

The aim of this thesis was to describe, investigate and compare the effects of smoking and atopy in asthma and COPD. A part of the research focused on asthmatic patients with ageing and smoking COPD phenotype, resulting in difficulties to discriminate between these two disorders. The following conclusions can be drawn: • Pathologists are able to differentiate between asthma and COPD, on condition they use a number of pathological criteria, and take the clinical setting into account, particularly the use of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS). • Prevalence of atopy is significantly higher in COPD patients who are males, have overweight and lower age. Atopy significantly associates with higher prevalence of respiratory symptoms and higher likelihood to lose cough upon treatment with busedonide. • Absence of atopy and non-ICS use contribute independently to higher numbers of IL-17 expressing cells. IL17-positive cells were found to be predominantly neutrophils. • CCL20 levels are higher in sputum of asthmatics who use ICS, whereas glucocorticoids increase the release of CCL20 by primary bronchial epithelial cells in vitro. • Smoking associates with higher epithelial HDAC-2 expression in airway biopsies from asthmatics, independent of ICS-use. • Increased Eosinophil Peroxidase (EPX) immunopositivity in airway biopsies from asthmatic subjects associates significantly with lower intact epithelium, particularly in uncontrolled asthma. In summary: heterogeneous populations of asthma and COPD patients determine the broad spectrum of obstructive airway diseases. Smoking and atopy may modulate the underlying inflammatory and clinical phenotype, and affect corticosteroid responsiveness. This heterogeneity should be taken into account when designing clinical studies

Formulation, Characterization and Physicochemical Evaluation of Potassium Citrate Effervescent Tablets

Purpose: The aim of this study was to design and formulation of potassium citrate effervescent tablet for reduction of calcium oxalate and urate kidney stones in patients suffering from kidney stones. Methods: In this study, 13 formulations were prepared from potassium citrate and effervescent base in different concentration. The flowability of powders and granules was studied. Then effervescent tablets were prepared by direct compression, fusion and wet granulation methods. The prepared tablets were evaluated for hardness, friability, effervescent time, pH, content uniformity. To amend taste of formulations, different flavoring agents were used and then panel test was done by using Latin Square method by 30 volunteers. Results: Formulations obtained from direct compression and fusion methods had good flow but low hardness. Wet granulation improves flowability and other physicochemical properties such as acceptable hardness, effervescence time ≤3 minutes, pH<6, friability < 1%, water percentage < 0.5% and accurate content uniformity. In panel test, both of combination flavors; (orange - lemon) and (strawberry - raspberry) had good acceptability. Conclusion: The prepared tablets by wet granulation method using PVP solution had more tablet hardness. It is a reproducible process and suitable to produce granules that are compressed into effervescent tablets due to larger agglomerates

Editorial: Blockade of PD‐1 and PD‐L1 restores defective innate immune responses in leukocytes from septic humans

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141591/1/jlb1229.pd

New strategies for treatment of infectious sepsis

In this mini review, we describe the molecular mechanisms in polymicrobial sepsis that lead to a series of adverse events including activation of inflammatory and prothrombotic pathways, a faulty innate immune system, and multiorgan dysfunction. Complement activation is a well‐established feature of sepsis, especially involving generation of C5a and C5b‐9, along with engagement of relevant receptors for C5a. Activation of neutrophils by C5a leads to extrusion of DNA, forming neutrophil extracellular traps that contain myeloperoxidase and oxidases, along with extracellular histones. Generation of the distal complement activation product, C5b‐9 (known as the membrane attack complex, MAC), also occurs in sepsis. C5b‐9 activates the NLRP3 inflammasome, which damages mitochondria, together with appearance in plasma of IL‐1β and IL‐18. Histones are strongly proinflammatory as well as being prothrombotic, leading to activation of platelets and development of venous thrombosis. Multiorgan dysfunction is also a feature of sepsis. It is well known that septic cardiomyopathy, which if severe, can lead to death. This complication in sepsis is linked to reduced levels in cardiomyocytes of three critical proteins (SERCA2, NCX, Na+/K+‐ATPase). The reductions in these three key proteins are complement‐ and histone‐dependent. Dysfunction of these ATPases is linked to the cardiomyopathy of sepsis. These data suggest novel targets in the setting of sepsis in humans.Review on infectious sepsis and new therapeutic targets that include complement activation products and receptors and histones.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149767/1/jlb10342_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149767/2/jlb10342.pd

Simultaneous detection of Aeromonas hydrophila, and Escherichia coli in Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) by Duplex PCR

Rapid and accurate identification of microorganisms have a significant impact on strategies and fish health management programs. Hence, in this study a duplex PCR assay based on the 16s rRNA gene for simultaneous detection of Aeromonas hydrophila RTICC 1032 and Escherichia coli RTICC 2325 from pure cultures, and challenged fish tissues was performed and their results were compared with the results of single PCR assays for each bacterium. For this purpose, an experiment with three treatments including artificially infected with A. hydrophila, E. coli and a mixture of them with a control group was designed. Fish were injected intraperitoneally with 1 ml of sterile physiological saline containing 106CFU/ml of the corresponding bacteria. Samples were collected from liver, kidney and spleen 48 hrs post-injection. A duplex PCR based 16S rRNA genes was developed for the simultaneous detection of A. hydrophila and E. coli. The PCR reaction conditions were optimized to permit detection of organisms from agar plates and fish tissues in less than 8 hrs. Each of the two pairs of oligonucleotide primers exclusively targeted 16S rRNA gene of the specific microorganism. When duplex PCR assay was used to simultaneous detection of the pathogens in asymptomatic fish, spleen and liver were negative for A. hydrophila, whereas kidney was positive for two bacteria. Samples that were duplex PCR negative were also negative by the culture method. On the whole, the duplex PCR has advantages in terms of its accuracy, sensitivity, ease of use, time of length analysis and cost-effectiveness compared to the single PCR and traditional method

A parameter tuned hybrid algorithm for solving flow shop scheduling problems with parallel assembly stages

In this paper, we study the scheduling problem for a customized production system consisting of a flow shop production line with a parallel assembly stage that produces various products in two stages. In the first stage of the production line, parts are produced using a flow shop production line, and in the second stage, products are assembled on one of the parallel assembly lines. The objective is to minimize the time required to complete all goods (makespan) using efficient scheduling. A mathematical model is developed; however, the model is NP-hard and cannot be solved in a reasonable amount of time. To solve this NP-hard problem, we propose two well-known metaheuristics and a hybrid algorithm. To calibrate and improve the performance of our algorithms, we employ the Taguchi method. We evaluate the performance of our hybrid algorithm with the two well-known methods of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and demonstrate that our hybrid algorithm outperforms both the GA and PSO approaches in terms of efficiency

Modelling and Forecasting Recessions in Oil-Exporting Countries: The Case of Iran

Business cycles show the ups and downs of the national production and can have a great impact on macroeconomic variables. That is why predicting business cycles in macroeconomic is of great importance. Since the main goal of economists is to provide the ground for economic stabilization and to prevent economic fluctuations and instabilities, knowing that the economy has entered a period of economic expansion or recession can be efficient in determining effective economic policies. In this research, using statistical data during 1974-2014 and decision making tree, we tried to forecast the next recessions in Iran. The results show that, among the indicators used, momentum imports, revenue from oil exports, unexpected momentum inflation, real total import, and inflation are more effective in recession forecast.  Also, the results indicate that BRT can be a useful technique for analyzing economic policy. Keywords: Recession forecast, Decision trees. JEL Classifications: E37, E32, C53, C5

Depression, anxiety and quality of life in caregiver spouses of veterans with chronic spinal cord injury

Objective: We were curious about the degree of anxiety and depression and their effect on the quality of life of the caregivers of veterans with spinal cord injury (SCI). Methods: A convenience sample of 72 out of 120 caregiver spouses of veterans with spinal cord injury participated in our study. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) were considered as a measure of depression and anxiety. The World Health Organization Quality of Life BREF questionnaire (WHOQOL-BREF) was considered to evaluate the quality of life. To compare the caregivers, we enrolled 74 matched caregiver spouses of patients without spinal cord injury. Results: The average age of the spouses was 44.7±6.5. The average time elapsed from the injury was 26.4±3.1 years. There was a significant difference in all domains of quality of life and depression between the caregivers and the control group, but there was not a significant difference in terms of anxiety. There was a negative correlation between depression and age, level of education and quality of life. Conclusion: Mental care support should be implemented for veterans and their spouses in addition to the provided facilities