Atherosclerosis: Pathophysiology and promising herbal remedies in traditional Persian medicine

Atherosclerosis is a progressive inflammatory disease and is considered as main reason of death and morbidity in worldwide. The common drugs which are used for treatment of atherosclerosis reveal side effects, therefore it is necessary to identify the natural sources. This study overviews the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis and effective medicinal plants present in Iran. In this study, 19 medical plants have been reported to be scientifically effective against atherosclerosis which are included Punica granatum L., Aloe vera, Amaranthus caudatus L., Artemisia sieberi Besser, Artemisia spp., Rhus coriaria, Nigella sativa L., Trifolium pratense L., Anethum graveolens, Glycyrrhiza glabra, Vaccinium myrtillus L, Gundelia tournefortii L, Hypericum perforatum, Curcuma longa, Crocus sativus L, Malus domestica, Silybum marianum, Berberis integerrima and Portulaca oleracea L. These plants have antioxidant and flavonoid compounds with unknown mechanisms serve to improve atherosclerosis. It seems that medicinal plants native to Iran, which have antioxidant and inhibit the oxidative stress, reduce inflammatory processes and ultimately improve atherosclerosis

Hematopoietic medicinal plants based on ethnobotanical documents of Iran: A strategy to develop nature-based drugs effective on anemia

Anemia is a very common public health problem which has recently been spread in both developed and developing countries. Anemia causes wanness, tachycardia, tinnitus, headache, irritability, weakness, and a number of nonspecific complaints. Many of the plants can be used as hematopoietic. This article is to report the medicinal plants that are used as hematopoietic according to the main references of the Iranian traditional medicine. For this purpose, the related articles were retrieved from the Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, Islamic World Science Citation Center, and Magiran by the search terms consisting of anemia, hematopoietic, ethnobotany, medicinal plants, Iran, and traditional medicine. According to the findings of this study, Raphanus sativus, Oriyganum vulgare, Thymus vulgaris, Rosmarinus officinalis, Petroselinum crispum, Allium sativum, Foeniculum vulgare, Spinacia oleracea L., Phaseolus vulgaris, Prunus armeniaca, Matricaria chamomilla, Cucumis melo var.inodorus, Rheum officinale, Cucumis melo, Ficus carica, Citrus latifolia, Solanum tuberosum L., Ananas comosus, Solanum lycopersicum, Brassica rapa, Daucus carota, Urtica dioica, and Centaurea cyanus were found to be hematopoietic plants. These plants contain bioactive and antioxidant components that either have iron or affect the body's mechanisms and cause hematopoiesis

An overview of the most important medicinal plants affecting cardiac arrhythmia in Iran

Oxidative stress occur in several diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, aging and Alzheimer's disease. Cardiac arrhythmia is today a common clinical problem presenting with decrease, increase or mismatch in normal heart rhythm that cause reduction in cardiac output. Given the importance of heart diseases and noting that in many countries, cardiovascular diseases are among the top causes of death and the leading cause of disability and the fact that application of medicinal plants and herbal medicines is common in the treatment of hypertension, ischemic heart disease, congestive heart disease, arrhythmias and angina pectoralis, therefore, this review aimed to identify the anti-arrhythmic medicinal plants indigenous in Iran. Due to the proven anti-arrhythmic effects of medicinal herbs including grape, sour orange, olive, pokeweeds and nettle and regarding the obvious phytochemical agents in them, so hesperidin, naringin, deosepyn, apigenin, aloroporin and hydroxytyrosol, phytolactosin, catechins, betacianin, tannins and free phenolic acids can be used as anti-arrhythmic ingredients used for the production of bioactive agents

Visitors' satisfaction of visit and the economic impacts of perceptions of ecotourism development support in Alamout area, Iran

Economic impacts are the main factor in developing sustainable ecotourism. They provide alternatives for the local community to support their lives in addition to traditional farming. Several research studies have focused on local perceptions upon tourism development impacts, but visitors' opinions have received less consideration. This study, therefore, is focused on visitors' perceptions and their intention to support ecotourism development in the Alamout area in Iran. A survey was conducted to assess the visitors' perception, intention to revisit and their support for ecotourism development. The structural equation modelling was developed by using AMOS to analyse the data. The result of the study indicates that "Create jobs", "Economic benefits to residents" and "Employment opportunity" were the high agreed positive economic impacts while "Increase the real estate prices", "Attract non-local investors" and "Increase in the price of goods" were the high negative perceived impacts from visitors' view. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis confirmed that visitors who perceived negative economic impacts were less likely to revisit or recommend the area

Final report of research project (thesis of medicaldegree)the determination of ubi scanin dete of ost eomye litis

ABSTRACT: Introduction: Imaging can be a useful tool in the setting of suspected osteomyelitis. Currently available techniques such as ultrasonography, CT, and MRI are anatomically oriented. Despite being highly sensitive and sophisticated, these modalities lack specificity for infection. Recently, antimicrobial peptides have been proposed as new agents to distinguish bacterial infections from sterile inflammatory processes and ubiquicidin (UBI) 29-41 is one of them that has showed interesting results for infection detection in previous studies. The aim of this study was to determine the UBI scan accuracy in detection of osteomyelitis and comparison of it with other modalities. Methods: Twenty patients (mean age=48.90 years) with suspected osteomyelitis were included in this study. After evaluation of each patient by history taking, physical exam, and proper laboratory tests, other processes include bone probing, wound culture, simple X-ray, bone MRI, and UBI scan were done for them. Preliminary diagnosis of osteomyelitis was acquired according to clinical and paraclinical data and confirmed by patient’s fallow up. Results: In current study, 17 cases had osteomyelitis in UBI scan and it showed accuracy of 100% in detection of osteomyelitis, compared with accuracy of 90% for three phase bone scan. Conclusion: 99mTc-UBI 29-41 is a proper choice for detection of osteomyelitis, regarding the fast imaging with high sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy. Key Words: Osteomyelitis; Ubiquicidin; 99mTc-UBI; Antimicrobial peptides; Infection detectio

A mini-review on the most important effective medicinal plants to treat hypertension in ethnobotanical evidence of Iran.

Nowadays, cardiovascular diseases are highly prevalent in human communities. Hypertension is a multifactorial disease which causes a mortality twice higher than general population. Given the fact that medicinal plants have long been used to treat hypertension and are currently being administered for this disease, we sought to report the mostly effective and important medicinal plants on hypertension therapy in ethno-botanical evidence of Iran. In this study, hypertension, Iran, ethno-botany, medicinal plants, and traditional medicine were used as key words to search in Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, EBSCO and EMBASE to select relevant articles. The findings of this study indicated that in Iran 40 plants in various provinces are used to treat hypertension. Because medicinal plants in this study contain effective compounds and have long been used to treat and reduce hypertension, they could provide suitable research arrangements for controlling hypertension, while effective natural drugs could be developed to control hypertension if their properties are confirmed in pharmacological studies

Phytochemical analysis of some plants from Lamiaceae family frequently used in folk medicine in Aligudarz region of Lorestan Province Lorestan ilinin Aligudarz bölgesinde halk ilaci olarak sikça kullanilan Lamiaceae familyasindan bazi bitkilerin fitokimyasal analizi

Many of the plants from the Lamiaceae family have been traditionally used as medicine all over the world. Also, some of the secondary metabolites isolated from this family have shown interesting biological function. In this study we have analyzed phytochemicals of some plants from Lamiaceae family frequently used in folk medicine in Aligudarz region of Lorestan province. In this regard, the plant species were collected and systematically identified during 2014-2015. The traditional and local uses of collected plants were questioned through informed consent semi-structured interviews with local informants. Phytochemical analysis was conducted to test the presence of compounds such as alkaloids, flavonoids, saponins, tannins, anthraquinone and glycosides. 25 plant species belonging to 13 genes were collected and identified. The most uses of the plants were in treating cold, gastrointestinal disorders and as flavoring agents. From 25 plant species, a number of 23 species had tannin, 22 species exhibited positive reactions to flavonoids, 4 species showed positive reactions to alkaloids and 1 species exhibited positive reactions to saponins. This research has provided insights on the use of secondary metabolites in folk medicine for promotion of appropriate human health. The studied plants in this article can be seen as a potential source for discovering new drugs