The impact of Silymarin on improvement of platelet abnormalities in patients with severe preeclampsia.

BACKGROUND Preeclampsia is a pregnancy-specific disorder that is associated with an increase in blood pressure and proteinuria; in severe cases, it can cause platelet abnormalities. Silymarin is the extract of Silybum marianum, which is recognized as a safe antioxidant drug. OBJECTIVE To determine the impact of Silymarin on the improvement of severe preeclampsia in 60 patients with severe preeclampsia. METHODS In this double-blind clinical trial study, This study included 60 patients whose pregnancies were terminated because of severe preeclampsia and who were referred to Hajar Hospital in Shahrekord, Iran, from April 2014 to September 2015. The patients were divided randomly into two groups, i.e., a group of 30 patients and a control group of 30 patients. In addition to the current treatments for preeclampsia, The members of the study group were administered 70 mg of Silymarin at three hours and 24 hours after the termination of their pregnancies. The control group received a placebo at the same times. Platelet count tests were compared at the baseline and at 12, 36, and 60 hours post-measurements in the two groups by SPSS software, version 22, by the ANOVA test, and by the independent-samples t-test. RESULTS At the baseline, the two groups were not significantly different in terms of various criteria, such as age, BMI, and platelet counts. There were no significant differences between the two groups regarding the number of platelets at 12, 36, and 60 h after their pregnancies were ended (p > 0.01). CONCLUSIONS The results of this study indicated that, although oxidative factors are involved in the incidence of complications of preeclampsia, e.g., thrombocytopenia, merely using an oxidative agent does not alleviate this effect. This indicated that other factors likely are involved in the pathogenesis of this disease. Additional studies are needed to prove the beneficial effects of this drug in the treatment of preeclampsia. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION The trial was registered at the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (http://www.irct.ir) with the Irct ID: IRCT201509042388/N1. FUNDING Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences supported this research (project no. 2006)

The Impact of Silymarin on Improvement of Hepatic Abnormalities in Patients with Severe Preeclampsia: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Abstract Background: Preeclampsia is a pregnancy-specific disorder, associated with increased blood pressure and proteinuria, and in extreme cases it can also cause liver and kidney problems. Objective: To determine the impact of silymarin on the improvement of severe preeclampsia. Methods: This randomized clinical trial was conducted at Hajar Hospital in Shahrekord, Iran, from April 2014 to September 2015. Sixty patients whose pregnancy had ended as a result of severe preeclampsia, were entered into the study. Patients were randomly divided into two groups of thirty study and control groups. In addition to current treatment for preeclampsia, case groups were administered 70 mg of silymarin, three and twenty four hours after the termination of pregnancy. The control group received placebo at the same time. The blood pressure and AST, ALT, ALP, LDH, uric acid, bilirubin and kidney tests were compared at the baseline and 12, 36 and 60 hours post- measurements in two groups by SPSS software, version 22, by the ANOVA test, and by the independent-samples t-test. Results: AST and ALT liver enzyme levels decreased significantly 36 and 60 hours after the termination of pregnancy in the study group compared to the control group (p <0.01). Conclusion: Silymarin is used to treat liver disorders, and has beneficial results. It seems that this drug can be used for accelerating improvement of liver disorders in severe preeclampsia. However, adjusting the dose of the drug for the treatment of liver disorders in severe preeclampsia requires further studies. Clinical trial registration: The trial was registered at the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (http://www.irct.ir) with the Irct ID: IRCT201509042388/N1. Funding: Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences supported this research (project no. 2006)

Chiral symmetry breaking in QED3{\rm QED}_{3} in presence of irrelevant interactions: a renormalization group study

Motivated by recent theoretical approaches to high temperature superconductivity, we study dynamical mass generation in three dimensional quantum electrodynamics ${\rm QED}_{3}$) in presence of irrelevant four-fermion quartic terms. The problem is reformulated in terms of the renormalization group flows of certain four-fermion couplings and charge, and then studied in the limit of large number of fermion flavors $N$. We find that the critical number of fermions $N_c$ below which the mass becomes dynamically generated depends continuously on a weak chiral-symmetry-breaking interaction. One-loop calculation in our gauge-invariant approach yields $N_{c0} = 6$ in pure ${\rm QED}_3$. We also find that chiral-symmetry-preserving mass cannot become dynamically generated in pure ${\rm QED}_{3}$.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Investigating the challenges of biodiversity management of Sefidkuh Khoramabad protected area by using the Delphi method

The main source of economic and agricultural development of all countries is natural resources. The dependency of local communities on natural resources and protected areas, and the excessive exploitation of forests and pastures and wildlife, has led to the destruction and degradation of biodiversity. The basis of managing protected areas in Iran is based on protection, research, training and entertaining, but in reality, protection is only limited to one fifth of these areas, which are safe. There is no management on the surrounding lands (the danger of islandization). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify and investigate the challenges of biodiversity management of Sefidkuh Khoramabad Protected Area by using Delphi method. This is a descriptive-analytic study. Thus, after identifying the available biodiversity and field visits and identifying the threats in the region, questionnaires were designed by experts regarding the Likert scale and were given to experts and specialists.The questions were answered by the experts and were analyzed by SPSS Software, the answers were prioritized by regression and descriptive analysis of existing threats and explained its relationship with four research variables (academic degree, familiarity with the region, job and employee of the organization). Then, this priority was organized as a questionnaire, and was given to the expert for final approval and identification of the main threats. Finally, some suggestions and recommendations are given.Keywords: Biodiversity, Challenges, Protected Areas, Sefidkouh, Prioritizatio

Statistics of fluctuations for two types of crossover: from ballistic to diffusive regime and from orthogonal to unitary ensemble

In our previous publication [Kogan et al, Phys. Rev. {\bf 48}, 9404 (1993)] we considered the issue of statistics of radiation diffusively propagating in a disordered medium. The consideration was in the framework of diagrammatic techniques and a new representation for the intensity distribution function in terms of connected diagrams only was proposed. Here we use similar approach to treat the issue of statistics in the regime of the crossover between ballistic and diffusive transport. We find that even small contribution from coherent component decreases by one half the intensity distribution function for small values of intensity and also produces oscillations of the distribution function. We also apply this method to study statistics of fluctuations of wave functions of chaotic electrons in a quantum dot in an arbitrary magnetic field, by calculating the single state local density in the regime of the crossover between the orthogonal and unitary ensemble.Comment: Revtex, 3 pages + 2 ps.figures in uuencoded file, a version which clarifies and unites the results of two previous submission

Localization of elastic waves in heterogeneous media with off-diagonal disorder and long-range correlations

Using the Martin-Siggia-Rose method, we study propagation of acoustic waves in strongly heterogeneous media which are characterized by a broad distribution of the elastic constants. Gaussian-white distributed elastic constants, as well as those with long-range correlations with non-decaying power-law correlation functions, are considered. The study is motivated in part by a recent discovery that the elastic moduli of rock at large length scales may be characterized by long-range power-law correlation functions. Depending on the disorder, the renormalization group (RG) flows exhibit a transition to localized regime in {\it any} dimension. We have numerically checked the RG results using the transfer-matrix method and direct numerical simulations for one- and two-dimensional systems, respectively.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Functional Assessment of Cardiac Responses of Adult Zebrafish (Danio rerio) to Acute and Chronic Temperature Change Using High-Resolution Echocardiography

The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is an important organism as a model for understanding vertebrate cardiovascular development. However, little is known about adult ZF cardiac function and how contractile function changes to cope with fluctuations in ambient temperature. The goals of this study were to: 1) determine if high resolution echocardiography (HRE) in the presence of reduced cardiodepressant anesthetics could be used to accurately investigate the structural and functional properties of the ZF heart and 2) if the effect of ambient temperature changes both acutely and chronically could be determined non-invasively using HRE in vivo. Heart rate (HR) appears to be the critical factor in modifying cardiac output (CO) with ambient temperature fluctuation as it increases from 78 ± 5.9 bpm at 18°C to 162 ± 9.7 bpm at 28°C regardless of acclimation state (cold acclimated CA– 18°C; warm acclimated WA– 28°C). Stroke volume (SV) is highest when the ambient temperature matches the acclimation temperature, though this difference did not constitute a significant effect (CA 1.17 ± 0.15 μL at 18°C vs 1.06 ± 0.14 μl at 28°C; WA 1.10 ± 0.13 μL at 18°C vs 1.12 ± 0.12 μl at 28°C). The isovolumetric contraction time (IVCT) was significantly shorter in CA fish at 18°C. The CA group showed improved systolic function at 18°C in comparison to the WA group with significant increases in both ejection fraction and fractional shortening and decreases in IVCT. The decreased early peak (E) velocity and early peak velocity / atrial peak velocity (E/A) ratio in the CA group are likely associated with increased reliance on atrial contraction for ventricular filling