The most important medicinal plants effective on constipation by the ethnobotanical documents in Iran: A review

Constipation is a prevalent gastrointestinal disease in both children and adults. This disease which is associated with the inability to empty rectum completely is diagnosed when defecation is difficult and delayed for two weeks or more and obviously causes discomfort. The culture of Iran traditional medicine is full of the medicinal plants with purgative property which have the potential to be used for production of purgative drugs. Therefore, we reported the medicinal plants used to treat constipation in the cultures and customs of different regions of Iran. In this review article, the relevant articles, books, and documents of Iran traditional medicine were searched for with the key words including constipation, bowel disorders, rectal discharge, ethnobotany, Iran traditional medicine, medicinal plants, and natural components in the databases, WOS, PubMed, Scopus, Islamic World Science Citation Center, and Magiran. The findings indicated that in East Azarbaijan, West Azarbaijan, Isfahan, Ilam, Khouzestan, Sistan va Balouchestan, Kerman, Mazandaran, and Hormozgan, local people used 41 plant species to treat constipation

A review of therapeutic and pharmacological effects of thymol

Thymol (C10H14O) is a monoterpene which is considered a phenolic component and is present in many vegetable oils. Thymol is an aromatic essence which is known as disinfectant in traditional medicine. Thymol is found in plants and has properties such as antibacterial, antipyretic, antispasmodic, antifungal, antioxidant, and hepatorotective, anti worm, antispasmodic for rats tracheal smooth muscles, gastroprotective, antihyperglycemic, antihyperlipidemic, analgesic, acaricide, and antiepileptic. Thymol is a medicinal, plant-based component with pleasant taste and smell and is found in many medicinal plants including Thymus vulgaris, and Carum copticum. Because it is inexpensive and exerts pharmaceutically peerless effects, it could be used to heal many of the diseases and may be commercially available in different countries in the future

A review of analgesic medicinal plants in Iran

Pain and inflammation are the main problems associated with different diseases in human communities. The currently available drugs including opioids and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are helpful for all patients because of complications and side effects. Therefore, there is still the need for suitable analgesics and researchers are still studying in this regard. Medicinal plants are rich sources of bioactive substances and antioxidant, and could have analgesic uses. In this review study, analgesic medicinal plants were searched for. Medicinal plants and analgesics were used as key words. The findings indicated that Thymus vulgaris, Mentha pulegium, Ziziphora tenuior, Origanum vulgarel L.Spp, Satureja hortensis Linn, Salvia sclarea, Gundelia tournefortii L., Datura stramonium L., Carum copticum, Pistacia vera L., Coriandrium sativum, Cinnamomum zeylanicum,Artemisia herba-alba,Cuminum cyminum L., Elaeagnus angustifolia, Glycyrrhiza glabra, etc. are the most frequently used analgesics

Shigellosis phytotherapy: A review of the most important native medicinal plants in Iran effective on Shigella

Shigella is a gram-negative intracellular pathogen which causes bacillus diarrhea in humans. Besides clinical and gastrointestinal diseases, shigella causes food poisoning. In Iran, medicinal plants are used to treat infectious diseases. In this review article, the native medicinal plants to Iran that are effective on shigellosis were reported. For this purpose the key words Shigella, medicinal plants, essence, and extract were searched for in databases such as Scientific Information Database, Scopus, PubMed, Magiran, and Google Scholar and the related articles were retrieved and analyzed. Findings indicated that 18 medicinal plants native to Iran were effective on shigellosis, including Echinophora cinerea Boiss, Echinophora cinerea Boiss, Stachys lavandulifolia Vahl, Cuminum cyminum, Alliums stadium, Cymbopogon olivieri (Boiss), Salvia suffruticosa, Achillea wilhelmsii, Cleome iberica, Centaurea depressa, Teucrium polium L., Salvia mirzayanii, Haplophyllum canaliculatum, Geum coccineum, Mentha spicata L., Saliva aethiopis L., Salvia atropatana Bunge, Salvia oligophylla Auch. Ex Benth., Salvia macrosiphon Boiss. Identification of effective components of these plants could be a route to producing nature-based antibiotics for shigellosis

Identification of medicinal plants effective on common cold: An ethnobotanical study of Shiraz, South Iran

Common cold is a very prevalent disease with cough, rhinorrhea, stuffy nose, and sore throat as the most common symptoms. Other symptoms include myalgia, fatigue, headache, and dyspepsia. Nowadays, there is no specific treatment to common cold but some ethnopharmacoligical and ethnobotanical studies have been done to investigate different therapies used to relieve disease symptoms. The present study was conducted to identify the medicinal plants used to treat common cold in Shiraz. The traditional therapeutic data in this study were gathered between July, 2015 and September, 2015 by the questionnaires distributed among the groceries across Shiraz. The findings of this study indicated that 22 medicinal plants are used to treat common cold in Shiraz. Some of the plants presented in this study such as Althea aucheri Boiss., Adonis aestivalis L., and Amygdalus scoparia Spach. are native to Shiraz region, and have been used to treat common cold for the first time in Iran traditional medicine. These plants may be used to produce effective natural drugs on common cold if complementary studies are conducted on them

Effects of vitamin B6 on premenstrual syndrome: A systematic review and meta-Analysis

Background and Objective: Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) refers to a range of physical and psychological symptoms which regularly occur during the luteal phase of a menstrual cycle and disappear short after menstruation starts. Considering the negative effects of PMS on women's daily life, various treatments have been developed to alleviate its symptoms. Vitamin B6 is one of the complementary therapies used to treat PMS. The present meta-Analysis aimed to investigate the effects of vitamin B6 on PMS. Methodology: Different databases including PubMed, ISI, Scopus, SID, Magiran, Science Direct, and Medlib were searched to identify studies addressing the effects of vitamin B6 on PMS. The relevant data obtained from these papers were analyzed by a random-effects model. Data were analyzed using R Ver. 3.2.3 Software and STATA. Results: There were significant reductions in the mean scores of PMS after treatment with vitamin B6 compare to control groups. Moreover, the mean PMS scores of the two groups were also significantly different after the treatment. The mean difference between the two groups was -1.19 [95% CI: -1.94,-0.44; P = 0.002]. Significant reductions were also observed in physical symptoms (P = 0.006) and psychological symptoms (P < 0.001) of PMS after the intervention. Conclusion: The results of our meta-Analysis confirmed vitamin B6 as a beneficial, inexpensive, and effective treatment for PMS symptoms. Therefore, the administration of this treatment option will enable midwives to achieve the important goal of reducing PMS symptoms

Investigation of the effect of education on nutritional knowledge, attitude and performance of primary school students in Ilam - 2015

Background and objective: Nutritional habits are formed in childhood and will remain until the end of life. Proper nutrition in childhood leads to the promotion of growth and development of child and reduces the risk of chronic diseases during adulthood. This study aimed to assess the effect of education about nutrition on nutritional knowledge, attitude and performance of students in primary schools. Methods: This is a quasi-experimental study which is conducted in 2015. 180 students from primary school in Ilam city were selected randomly and assigned into case (90 people) and control (90 people) groups. Before initiation of educations, a pretest was held in both groups. Then for the case group, a nutritional education was performed during 5 sessions of 45 minutes. After 2 weeks of finishing the educational sessions, posttest was performed by giving a questionnaire of knowledge, attitude and performance to case and control groups. Eventually, two groups were compared with each other in terms of nutritional knowledge, attitude and performance. In order to analyze the collected data, SPSS 21 software was used. The significance level of tests was 5% and descriptive statistics including tables and numeric indices and also inferential tests including paired t-Test, independent t-Test and Chi-square were used. Results: Findings of this study showed that in the case group, there was a statistically significant difference between the mean score of knowledge, attitude and performance of students before and after education (P 0.05). There was also a significant difference between case and control groups after education (P< 0.05). Conclusion: Nutritional education may lead to the improvement of nutritional knowledge, attitude and performance of primary school students. Considering the importance and role of students and also low cost of preventive measures in comparison with therapeutic measures, it looks necessary to expand this type of educational program

Effects of Common Fig ( Ficus carica

Formaldehyde (FA) is the leading cause of cellular injury and oxidative damage in testis that is one of the main infertility causes. There has been an increasing evidence of herbal remedies use in male infertility treatment. This assay examines the role of Ficus carica (Fc) leaf extracts in sperm parameters and testis of mice intoxicated with FA. Twenty-five adult male mice were randomly divided into control; sham; FA-treated (10 mg/kg twice per day); Fc-treated (200 mg/kg); and FA + Fc-treated groups. Cauda epididymal spermatozoa were analyzed for viability, count, and motility. Testes were weighed and gonadosomatic index (GSI) was calculated. Also, histoarchitecture of seminiferous tubules was assessed in the Haematoxylin and Eosin stained paraffin sections. The findings showed that FA significantly decreased GSI and increased percentage of immotile sperm compared with control group. Disorganized and vacuolated seminiferous epithelium, spermatogenic arrest, and lumen filled with immature germ cells were also observed in the testes. However, Fc leaf extracts improved sperm count, nonprogressive motility of spermatozoa, and GSI in FA-treated testes. Moreover, seminiferous tubule with spermatogenic arrest was rarely seen, indicating that Fc has the positive effects on testis and epididymal sperm parameters exposed with FA

Review of Differentiation and Proliferation of Primordial Germ Cells in Culture

Primordial germ cells (PGCs) are highly specialized cell population that arises from the epiblast in vivo. There are three critical steps in the life cycle of these cells: 1-Specification 2-migration and proliferation 3-prenatal and postnatal sex specific development. Specification of germ cells in epiblast occurs due to signals secreted from extraembryonic tissues. Primordial germ cells are required for continuation and development of the species. Thus, differentiation and purification of these cells from different cell sources is valuable for research, genetical analysis of germ cell development, epigenetic eveluation and infertility treatment. The most important part in the germ cell differentiation includes; optimum media selection, distinguishing and purification of differentiated cell. Several studies about in vitro PGC differentiation have been reported. In order to distinguish PGCs in vitro, specific markers which are expressed in these cells are used. Furthermore, functional ability of these cells for production of offspring can be employed for this purpose

The effects of cyanobacterial blooms on MODIS-L2 data products in the southern Caspian Sea

Summary: MODIS satellite imageries with minimal cloud cover (<25%) were used to extract cyanobacteria index, floating algea index, fluorescence line height, chlorophyll-a and sea surface temperature products, for seven days concurrent with blooms. The results showed a positive correlation between cyanobacteria index and chlorophyll-a (R = 0.74, p ≤ 0.05 and R = 0.75, p ≤ 0.05 for 2005 and 2010 respectively), and a negative correlation between the cyanobacteria index and fluorescence line height (R = −0.74, p ≤ 0.05 and R = −0.93, p ≤ 0.005 for 2005 and 2010 respectively). Further analysis showed that considering Fluorescence Line Height is not sufficient to detect the cyanobacterial blooms in the offshore area. However, the results indicated a weak correlation between cyanobacteria index and floating algae index (R = −0.42, p = 0.34 and R = −0.47, p = 0.29 for 2005 and 2010 respectively). The results also indicated that the irregular increases in the cyanobacteria index and chlorophyll-a in the study region was an operational index for the incidence of cyanobacterial bloom, where the surface wind speed and temperature conditions were <4 m s−1 and ≥30°C, respectively. Finally, a linear model was defined for monitoring, which determines occurrence or non-occurrence of cyanobacteria bloom based on daily monitoring of the changes of products. In order to evaluate the proposed model, its efficiency was tested on datasets at different times and locations, and the results were consistent with field reports, as expected. Keywords: Remote sensing, Cyanobacterial index, Floating algae index, Chlorophyll-a, Fluorescence line heigh