Nephrotoxicity and hepatotoxicity evaluation of Crocus sativus stigmas in neonates of nursing mice

Background: Crocus sativus, known as saffron crocus, is best known for the spice saffron. Saffron use spans more than 3500 years, however, its toxicity on neonates during lactation has not yet evaluated. Objectives: This study was aimed to examine the acute toxicity of saffron on adult mice and its nephrotoxicity and hepatotoxicity on neonates of lactating mothers that used saffron during lactation. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, following acute toxicity evaluation, 32 pregnant mice were randomly designated into four equal groups. Following delivery, the mothers of groups 1 to 4 were administered orally (by gavage) normal saline (control group), 500, 1000 or 2000 mg/kg/day of saffron for three weeks, respectively. The newborns’ kidney and liver parameters were assessed at the end of the study for possible nephrotoxicity and hepatotoxicity evaluation. The kidney and liver tissue samples of newborns were histopathologically studied after staining with Hematoxylin & Eosin. Data were analyzed using ANOVA and Scheffe’s tests Results: The LD50 value of saffron was calculated to be 4120±556 mg/kg in mice. To evaluate lactating toxicity, saffron was administered orally to the mothers once daily for 21 days, after delivery, during lactating period. Saffron increased serum urea nitrogen (p< 0.05). Histological studies indicated that saffron did not have any toxic effect on liver, however, histopathology changes were seen in the kidney of neonates. Conclusions: From the results of present study, it might be concluded that saffron is a nearly safe spice, however, nursing mothers should avoid high doses of this spice. © 2014, Society of Diabetic Nephropathy Prevention. All rights reserved

Turmeric: A spice with multifunctional medicinal properties

Curcuma longa (Turmeric), belonging to Zingiberaceae family is one of the most useful herbal medicinal plants. Extensive researches have proven that most of the turmeric activities of the turmeric are due to curcumin. It has various useful properties with antioxidant activities and is useful in conditions such as inflammation, ulcer and cancer. It also has antifungal, antimicrobial renal and hepatoprotective activities. Therefore, it has the potential against various cancer, diabetes, allergies, arthritis, Alzheimer&rsquo;s disease and other chronic and hard curable diseases. The purpose of this review was to provide a brief summary of the new and current knowledge of the effects of curcumin. The recently published papers in international cites such as PubMed/Medline, Science Citation Index and Google Scholar about turmeric were searched. Recent studies have authenticated the use of turmeric for various diseases especially oxidative stress induced ones such as cancer, diabetes mellitus and inflammatory disorders. It also is used as hepatoprotective, nephroprotective, anticoagulant and anti-HIV to combat AIDS. Curcumin, as a spice, exhibits great promise as a therapeutic agent. It has very low toxicity, too. As the global scenario is now changing towards the use of non-toxic plant products having traditional medicinal use, development of modern drugs from turmeric should be emphasized for the control of various diseases. Further evaluation needs to be carried out on turmeric in order to explore the concealed areas and their practical clinical applications, which can be used for the welfare of mankind

Enhancing Word Embeddings with Knowledge Extracted from Lexical Resources

In this work, we present an effective method for semantic specialization of word vector representations. To this end, we use traditional word embeddings and apply specialization methods to better capture semantic relations between words. In our approach, we leverage external knowledge from rich lexical resources such as BabelNet. We also show that our proposed post-specialization method based on an adversarial neural network with the Wasserstein distance allows to gain improvements over state-of-the-art methods on two tasks: word similarity and dialog state tracking.Comment: Accepted to ACL 2020 SR

Silybum marianum: Beyond Hepatoprotection.

Silybum marianum is a medicinal plant that has long been used as hepatoprotective remedy. It has been used for the treatment of numerous liver disorders characterized by functional impairment or degenerative necrosis. Its hepatoprotective activity is unique and acts in different ways, including antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities, cell permeability regulator and membrane stabilizer, stimulation of liver regeneration and inhibition of deposition in collagen fibers, which may lead to cirrhosis. Most of documented data with Silybum marianum are about liver disorders; however, recently several beneficial properties on a wide variety of other disorders such as renal protection, hypolipidemic and anti-atherosclerosis activities, cardiovascular protection, prevention of insulin resistance, especially in cirrhotic patients, cancer, and Alzheimer prevention. It is also used as a food remedy. This review article aims to present different aspects of Silybum marianum, especially the data in recently published articles about its effects on different diseases, apart from presenting the aspects of its hepatoprotection

Effect of Scorbic acid on Hyperlipidemia

هیپرلیپیدمی یکی از مهم ترین ریسک فاکتورهای آترواسکروزیس می باشد که عامل مهمی در بروز بیماریهای قلبی و سکته مغزی است. اگر چه داروهای مفیدی برای کاهش چربی های خون وارد بازار شده ولی تلاش برای یافتن مواد موثرتر و کم عارضه تر همچنان ادامه دارد. با توجه به گزارشات پراکنده مبنی بر احتمال تـأثیر مثبت مصرف ویتامین C بر کاهش چـربی های خون در این تحـقیق تاثیر این ویتامین بر تری گلیـسرید، کلستـرول، لیپو پروتئین با چـگالی پائین (LDL) و لیپو پروتئین با چگالی بالا (HDL)، در بیماران مصرف کننده لیپیدمی ، مورد بررسی قرار گرفت. در یک کارآزمایی بالینی دو سوکور دو گروه 31 نفره از بیماران مبتلا به هیپرلیپیدمی مصرف کننده لواستاتین انتخاب و پس از انجام آزمایشات مربوط به چربی خون، به گروه مورد روزانه 1000 میلی گرم ویتامین C و به گروه شاهد پلاسبو اضافه شد. پس از 10 هفته مجدداً خون بیماران مورد آزمایش قرار گرفت. نتایج مطالعه نشان داد در هیچ یک از فاکتورهای تری گلیسرید، کلسترول و LDL از نظر آماری تغییر حاصل نشده، ولی میزان HDL بیماران تحت درمان با ویتامین C در مقایسه با گروهی که پلاسبو دریافت کرده بودند افزایش پیدا کرده بود (05/0

Medicinal plants for renal injury prevention.

It has been estimated that about 20% of men and 25% of women between the ages of 65 and 74 have some degrees of chronic kidney. This complication is attributed to oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is an important factor contributing to kidney damage by increasing production of oxidants, particularly insufficiency of endogenous antioxidant defense system. Medicinal plants antioxidants are able to ameliorate oxidative induced kidney damage by reduction of lipid peroxidation and enhancement of scavenging ability of antioxidant defense system. Supplementation of medicinal plants antioxidants might be considered important remedies to abrogate pathology of oxidative stress induced kidney damage, however, single antioxidants do not act the same and might not be beneficial