Acoustic Parameters in Persian-Speaking Patients with Dysphonia

Background & Objectives: Studying voice acoustic parameters in vowel production is a crucial component of every standard voice evaluation. Voice Analysis is non-invasive. Nowadays, computerized Voice Analysis is growing rapidly. Therefore, understanding acoustic parameters in healthy and unhealthy individuals is more significant than before. This research is a step toward boosting our knowledge about voice acoustic parameters. The main purpose of this research is to study acoustic characteristics in dysphonic and healthy Iranian individuals.  Methods: The current study was descriptive-analytic. Vowel Analysis was conducted through Praat software. Voices of 50 dysphonic patients and 50 healthy participants were evaluated. The acoustic parameters included average, standard deviation, and range of fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, the number and degree of voice breaks, and harmonic to noise ratio. Results: In all studied acoustic characteristics, patients’ mean scores were higher than controls’ mean scores, except for harmonic to noise ratio which was higher in the healthy individuals. Although, the number of voice breaks in healthy male and female population was zero, it was 1.8 in male patients and 4.4 in female patients (P<0.05). jitter and shimmer in patients were dramatically higher (P<0.05) than their amount in healthy controls; moreover, patients’ fundamental frequency range (male: 54.6±59.0, female: 78.6±68.4) was extremely broader than individuals with normal voices (male: 9.7±4.1, female: 16.2±7.3). Conclusion: It was clarified that there are considerably significant differences in some acoustic features. These differences may be used as a foundation for diagnosis and intervention in dysphonic patients. This study illustrated that Acoustic Analysis can differentiate healthy individuals from patients. Hence, it can be used as a non-invasive, fast and accurate method

Developing the Guideline of Therapeutic Interventions for Street Children With Substance Use Disorders

Millions of children are left to survive on the streets around the world. Investigations on drug use disorders among street children reveal that they not only abuse all types of drugs higher than their peers who live at home or in shelters, but also they abuse more harmful drugs such as injection drugs or methamphetamines. This guideline provides a comprehensive approach to the treatment and management of substance use disorders among children of 3 to 18 years of age for the staff of substance use disorder clinics. It highlights examples of how to perceive and approach the management and issues of substance abuse among street children at an early stage of development through various medical, psycho-social, and other interventions. It also defines the characteristics of the street children with a focus on prevention. These provisions consist of addressing the applicability matters in this area and necessity of a decision model in our country

Distribution of non-tuberculosis mycobacteria strains from suspected tuberculosis patients by heat shock protein 65 PCR–RFLP

The genus Mycobacterium contains more than 150 species. Non-tuberculosis mycobacteria (NTM) often cause extrapulmonary and pulmonary disease. Mycobacteria detection at species level is necessary and provides useful information on epidemiology and facilitates successful treatment of patients. This retrospective study aimed to determine the incidence of the NTM isolates and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) in clinical specimens collected from Iranian patients during February 2011–December 2013, by PCR–restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis (PRA) of the hsp65 gene. We applied conventional biochemical test and hsp65–PRA identification assay to identify species of mycobacteria in specimens from patients suspected of having mycobacterial isolates. This method was a sensitive, specific and effective assay for detecting mycobacterial species and had a 100% sensitivity and specificity for Mtb and Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) species. Using PRA for 380 mycobacterial selected isolates, including 317 Mtb, four Mycobacterium bovis and of the 59 clinical isolates, the most commonly identified organism was Mycobacterium kansasii (35.6%), followed by Mycobacterium simiae (16.9%), Mycobacterium gordonae (16.9%), Mycobacterium fortuitum (5.1%), Mycobacterium intracellulare (5.1%), Mycobacterium avium (5.1%), Mycobacterium scrofulaceum (3.4%), Mycobacterium gastri (3.4%), Mycobacterium flavescens (3.4%), Mycobacterium chelonae (3.4%) and Mycobacterium nonchromogenicum (1.7%). PRA method, in comparison with classical methods, is rapid, useful and sensitive for the phylogenetic analysis and species detection of mycobacterial strains. Mycobacterium kansasii is the most common cause of infection by NTM in patients with non-HIV and HIV which demonstrated a high outbreak and diversity of NTM strains in our laboratory. Keywords: Non-tuberculosis mycobacteria, Heat shock protein 65, PCR–RFL