Incidence rate of thyroid cancer in Iranian population, trend analysis from 2003 to 2009

Background and aims: Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine malignant and papillary cancer and three times more prevalent in women than men. The aim of this study was to evaluate the incidence rate and trend of thyroid cancer in Iranian population. Methods: National incidence was rated by Iran National Cancer Registry data derived from Iran’s annual national cancer registration reported from 2003 to 2009. The crude rate and age standardized rate were used to express the incidence of thyroid cancer. Results: The results indicated that, the incidence of thyroid cancer increased from 2003 to 2009. The age standardized rate for women and men increased from 2.02 and 0.82 to 4.2 and 1.36 per 100,000, respectively. Conclusion: This study indicated remarkable increasing trends in thyroid cancer incidence. So, attention to high risk groups and public programs is necessary to reduce the incidence of this cancer in future

Under-estimation and Over-estimation in Gastric Cancer Incidence Registry in Khorasan Provinces, Iran

Gastric cancer is a disease which the cells forming the inner lining of the stomach start to divide uncontrollably, forming a mass called a tumor. Patients with gastric cancer from low facility provinces like North and South Khorasans may diagnose and registered in full featured provinces like Razavi-Khorasan; this causes misclassification error. The presence of this error makes the registry systems inaccurate and unreliable for estimating the burden of cancer and policy making. Two approaches are recommended for reducing the effects of misclassification; the first is using a small validation sample and the second is a Bayesian analysis which provides subjective prior information for the subset of the parameters to correct the statistics. Data for this study extracted from Iranian annual of national cancer registration report in 2008. The age standardized rate due to gastric cancer [ICD-10; C16] were expressed as rate per/100,000 population for male and female of North, South and Razavi Khorasans. To correct the misclassification effect, a Bayesian approach was used with Poisson count regression and beta prior. The reported expected coverage of cancer incidence for Razavi-Khorasan was 155.5% and exceeds than what expected, whereas the North and South Khorasans have just observed respectively 34.8% and 41.4% of their expected coverage. The results of the Bayesian analysis indicated that there was about 34% misclassification in gastric cancer incidence registry from North and South Khorasans in Razavi-Khorasan. In planning for resource allocation, authorities should consider that, low incidence of gastric cancer in North and South Khorasans, may be the effect of misclassification and it is needed to allocate them more health facilities and improve their address registration accuracy using National ID, electric bill, etc.

Assessing thermodynamic models and introducing novel method for prediction of methane hydrate formation

Abstract Transmission of natural gas with methane as the main constituent has been a subject of interest to industrial companies. Predicting hydrate formation conditions is important to prevent formation of methane hydrate in gas pipeline. Also, attention has been taken to account for capture and storage of pure methane. In this paper, a comprehensive comparison is performed between empirical correlations and different equation of state in van der Waals Platteeuw (VdW-P) thermodynamic model to determine the most accurate method of hydrate formation condition of methane. In addition, a novel, simple and accurate correlation is developed to predict methane hydrate formation temperature using genetic programming. Error analysis on a wide range of experimental data indicates that the new proposed correlation is superior over existing correlations and all VdW-P models with R 2 = 0.999

Conditioned Media Derived from Human Adipose Tissue Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Improves Primary Hepatocyte Maintenance

Objective Recent advances in cell therapy have encouraged researchers to provide an alternative for treatment and restoration of damaged liver through using hepatocytes. However, these cells quickly lose their functional capabilities in vitro. Here, we aim to use the secretome of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) to improve in vitro maintenance conditions for hepatocytes. Materials and Methods In this experimental study, following serum deprivation, human adipose tissue-derived MSCs (hAT-MSCs) were cultured for 24 hours under normoxic (N) and hypoxic (H) conditions. Their conditioned media (CM) were subsequently collected and labeled as N-CM (normoxia) and H-CM (hypoxia). Murine hepatocytes were isolated by perfusion of mouse liver with collagenase, and were cultured in hepatocyte basal (William’s) medium supplemented with 4% N-CM or H-CM. Untreated William’s and hepatocyte-specific media (HepZYM) were used as controls. Finally, we evaluated the survival and proliferation rates, as well as functionality and hepatocyte-specific gene expressions of the cells. Results We observed a significant increase in viability of hepatocytes in the presence of N-CM and H-CM compared to HepZYM on day 5, as indicated by MTS (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-5-(3-carboxymethoxyphenyl)-2-(4-sulfophenyl)- 2H-tetrazolium) assay. Indocyanine green (ICG) uptake of hepatocytes in the H-CM and HepZYM groups on days 3 and 5 also suggested that H-CM maintained the hepatocytes at about the same level as the hepatocyte-specific medium. The HepZYM group had significantly higher levels of albumin (Alb) and urea secretion compared to the other groups (P<0.0001). However, there were no significant differences in cytochrome activity and cytochrome gene expression profiles among these groups. Finally, we found a slightly, but not significantly higher concentration of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the H-CM group compared to the N-CM group (P=0.063). Conclusion The enrichment of William’s basal medium with 4% hAT-MSC-H-CM improved some physiologic parameters in a primary hepatocyte culture