In vitro evaluation of the effect of ethanolic extract of Propolis on human hemoglobin glycation, a laboratory study

زمینه و هدف: گلایکه شدن واکنش غیر آنزیمی اتصال قند به پروتئین می باشد که در افراد دیابتی با میزان قند ‌خون بالا، افزایش می یابد. محصولات تولید شده در این واکنش باعث ایجاد و تشدید عوارض دیابت می شوند و نیز در بسیاری از بیماری ها دخیل هستند. پروپولیس (Propolis) از گذشته‌های دور به‌ طور گسترده ای در طب سنتی به ‌کار برده می شود و شواهد قابل توجهی وجود دارد که نشان می دهد پروپولیس دارای خاصیت آنتی‌اکسیدانی بسیار قوی می‌باشد. این مطالعه با هدف بررسی اثر پروپولیس در کاهش میزان گلایکه شدن هموگلوبین در شرایط آزمایشگاهی انجام شده است. روش بررسی: در این مطالعه تجربی، هموگلوبین تخلیص شده در حضور و عدم حضور قند گلوکز و عصاره اتانولی پروپولیس با سه غلظت مختلف به مدت 5 هفته انکوبه گردید. میزان گلایکه شدن هموگلوبین به وسیله سنجش میزان آزاد سازی گروه هِم موجود در هموگلوبین و جابجایی باند سورت، تولید محصولات ناشی از تخریب هِم و بررسی ساختارهای آمیلوئیدی به ‌کمک طیف ‌سنجی مرئی- ماوراء بنفش و فلوئورسانس تعیین شد. همچنین از آسپیرین به عنوان ماده ضدگلایکه‌ی کنترل استفاده شد. یافته ها: گلایکه شدن هموگلوبین در حضور عصاره پروپولیس با بالاترین غلظت به میزان 50 درصد مهار گردید. دو غلظت کمتر عصاره میزان مهار پایین تری از گلایکه شدن نشان داد. همچنین بررسی های انجام‌ شده در مورد محصولات ناشی از تخریب هِم و ساختار فیبریلار، نشان دهنده کاهش چشمگیر گلایکه شدن هموگلوبین در حضور عصاره پروپولیس می باشد. نتیجه گیری: هموگلوبین در حضور گلوکز به شدت گلایکه شد و پروپولیس در یک روند وابسته به غلظت از این واکنش جلوگیری کرده و گلایکه ‌شدن هموگلوبین را کاهش داد. احتمالاً پروپولیس به ‌وسیله‌ی خاصیت آنتی ‌اکسیدانی قوی خود گلایکه شدن پروتئین را مهار می نماید و از‌این‌رو می تواند در کاهش عوارض دیابت موثر باشد

A Survey of Scientific Publication by the Islamic Azad University from Beginning to ‎February 2013‎

The goal of this paper is evaluation of published scientific documents of Islamic Azad University (IAU) in WOS from the beginning until Feb. 2013. The method of this study was extracting of all published IAU documents that have been indexed in WOS in all field of Science, Social Science and Art & Humanity. Research findings show that in this period, 18398 scientific documents have been published by IAU that is about 12.42% of Iran’s total published scientific documents from 1956 until the present time. Clustering of the journals based on topic indicated that 22.72% of documents are related to Chemistry, 14.45% related to Engineering Sciences, and 8.92% published in Physics. The increasing number of IAU documents from Jan. 1999 until Feb. 2013 is significant. In 2012, the IAU reached the first position of scientific documents production among all Iranian universities. Most scientific collaborations of IAU in scientific publication have been with US, followed by Malaysia, England, Germany, Turkey, and Australia. More than 4700 IAU documents have been published in 37 journals, 8 of them lack or have a poor peer-review process. At the end, a number of suggestions for increasing quality of IAU’s scientific documents have been offered

Exploring the Relationships between the Characteristics of Papers published by the Iranian Top One Percent Researchers and Their Citation and Social Impacts

The purpose of this study in the first phase was to determine the relationships between the characteristics of the articles published by the Iranian top one percent researchers in 2020 (journal Impact Factor, and author impacts; paper, abstract, and title lengths; author affiliations, number of references, author-supplied keywords, and number of countries; access type, and funding) with the citation counts, readership counts, and altmetric attention score (AAS), which were respectively extracted from Web of Science (WoS), Mendeley and Altmetic.com. The research aim in the second phase was to demonstrate their presence in the international patents, Iranian research outputs indexed in WoS, the curriculum of their fields, profiling services, and their academic inbreeding status and collaborations patterns. The method of this applied study was descriptive in terms of purpose and scientometric in terms of approach, which was conducted based on citation analysis, altmetric and bibliometric techniques. The statistical population of the research was 12 Iranian top one percent researchers from the top one percent researchers listed on Clarivate Analytics in 2020. The findings demonstrated that the characteristics of the articles, including the number of affiliations, authors' h-index, journal impact factor, authors and references counts, and title and abstract length, have been correlated positively with their citations, AAS, and readership. In addition, articles published by authors with a higher h-index had a greater AAS and readership, and articles with longer titles had a lower AAS. However, no statistically significant correlation was found between the citation counts and the AAS with the author keywords’ counts, and paper lengths, and also between the AAS with the countries count. The access type variable did not affect the number of citations, but non-open-access articles received higher AAS and readership than open-access articles. In addition, funded articles obtained fewer citations, AAS, and readership than non-funded articles. There was no relationship between the academic inbreeding of Iranian top one percent researchers with their citations and AAS. However, there was a weak correlation between the average number of citations and AAS of the Iranian top one percent researchers. Eventually, these researchers did not have a high national impact based on the indicators of presence in the references of Iranian papers indexed in WoS and references/resources of the curriculum of their field. Just 1.5 percent of the publications of these researchers' were cited in patents, and many of them were contributed by Omid Akhavan and Nosratullah Dabir Vaziri

Investigating Research Financially Supported by the Iran National Science Foundation in Scopus and Web of Science Citation Databases

Scientific productions (publications and patents), as an indicator of the activities of the scientific system, countries, organizations, and research centers, have always been the focus of policymakers and decision-makers at the national and international levels. The main purpose of this study was to study the performance of researchers supported by the Iran National Science Foundation (INSF) in the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases. The present research has been done by the descriptive method and the scientometric approach. The data obtained from the research were analyzed using the HistCite, VOSviewer, and Excel software. The research population consists of scientific publications indexed in the Scopus database with a number of 10397 on June 14, 2021, and in WoS with a number of 11530 documents on May 11, 2021. The findings showed that publications supported by the INSF have an increasing trend and the main formats of scientific publications were research articles, review articles, quick access articles, litigation articles, and book chapters. Among the authors of publications and citations, Massoud Salavati with 325 documents was the most prolific author in Scopus, and Abbas Shafiei with 199 documents was the most prolific author in WoS. Analysis of articles showed that 36.32 percent of articles were published in journals of the first and second quartiles (Q 1 and Q 2), which indicated the scientific quality of the articles. The publications supported by the INSF have had the most national collaborations with the University of Tehran, Tarbiat Modares University, and the Sharif University of Technology in WoS. Research publications supported by the INSF nationally have had the most collaborations with the University of Tehran, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, and Islamic Azad University in papers indexed in Scopus. The publications supported by the INSF at the international level in WoS have had the most collaborations with Iran, the US, Germany, and Canada. The publications supported by the INSF have also had the most international cooperation with Iran, the US, Germany, and Canada in Scopus. Analyzing the subject areas of publications showed that most of its publications in WoS were in the field of multidisciplinary chemistry with 1083 documents, multidisciplinary sciences with 998 documents, and chemistry physics with 837 documents. Investigating the subject category of publications supported by the NSF in Scopus indicated that the field of chemistry with 3022 documents, engineering with 2585 documents, and material science with 2496 documents have the most documents

Evaluation of authorship patterns in Iranian articles and its relation to citations

Background and aim: Scientific collaborations increase citations and its results in the others' research. This aim of this study was to determine the number of authors in different majors of humanities, basic sciences and arts and the relationship between the number of authors and number of citations on Iranian articles indexed in the Web of Science. Material and methods: The present study was conducted using descriptive and analytical methods through scientometric methods. The research population was all articles published by Iranian researchers on the topics of basic sciences, humanities and art, indexed in the Web of Science in 2012, which were 17671 documents. The number of citations of articles has been recorded by May 2016. The year of 2016 was selected for the articles in the various categories would have enough time to get the citation. Data were collected via referring to articles in each field, counting the number of authors in each article and the number of citations received each article until May 2016. Bib Excel, Excel, and SPP softwares were used to analyzed the data. Findings: This research has shown that the largest share of research collaboration in Iran is in a group of two to five people. Moreover, there was a relationship and correlation between the number of authors and the number of citations in different majors. Conclusion: Among the examined categories, the field of medicine had the highest correlation coefficient between the number of authors and the number of citations, and archeology had the lowest correlation

Visualizing Hot and Emerging Topics in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Iran

The purpose of this descriptive research was to identify hot and emerging topics in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Iran and to map the intellectual structure of this field in a ten-year period. The intellectual structure of the field of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Iran was studied by analyzing co-occurrences of keywords and cited references. The research population of this study was all research and review papers of Iranian researchers published in journals indexed by the Web of Science database from 2008 to 2017. The collected data from Web of Science were analyzed by the CiteSpace Software in order to map the intellectual structure of this field. The results showed that the keywords such as gene expression, protein, in vitro, oxidative stress, binding, apoptosis and cell were among the hot research topics in Iran and terms such as chitosan, nanocomposite, antibacterial activity, dynamics molecules, stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells and immobilization have been indicative of the emerging topics in Iranian research in the studied time period. Increasing publications in the field of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Iran at the international level and its inclusion in the country's research priorities led us to conduct a scientometric study of this research area. Therefore, due to the hot and emerging topics identified in this research, such studies can be used as a road map for the country's large-scale scientific planning and policy

A health concern regarding the protein corona, aggregation and disaggregation

Nanoparticle (NP)-protein complexes exhibit the correct identity of NP in biological media. Therefore, protein-NP interactions should be closely explored to understand and to modulate the nature of NPs in medical implementations. This review focuses mainly on the physicochemical parameters such as dimension, surface chemistry, the morphology of NPs and influence of medium pH on the formation of protein corona and conformational changes of adsorbed proteins by different kinds of methods. Also, the impact of protein corona on the colloidal stability of NPs is discussed. Uncontrolled protein attachment on NPs may bring unwanted impacts such as protein denaturation and aggregation. In contrast, controlled protein adsorption by optimal concentration, size, pH and surface modification of NPs may result in potential implementation of NPs as therapeutic agents especially for disaggregation of amyloid fibrils. Also, the effect of NPs-protein corona on reducing the cytotoxicity and clinical implications such as drug delivery, cancer therapy, imaging and diagnosis will be discussed. Validated correlative physicochemical parameters for NP-protein corona formation frequently derived from protein corona fingerprints of NPs which are more valid than the parameters obtained only on the base of NP features. This review may provide useful information regarding the potency as well as the adverse effects of NPs to predict their behavior in the in vivo experiments.Comment: 40 pages, 20 figure

In vitro study of oxali-palladium effect on human hemoglobin

زمینه و هدف: داروهای بر پایه پلاتین با اتصال به هموگلوبین سبب آزاد شدن گروه هِم از هموگلوبین شده، عملکرد هموگلوبین را مختل کرده و بدین ترتیب در بیمار تحت درمان ایجاد کم خونی می کند. هدف از تحقیق حاضر، بررسی اثرات جانبی اگزالی پالادیوم به عنوان یک داروی ضد سرطان جدید سنتزی، از طریق بر هم کنش با هموگلوبین و تخریب گروه هِم می باشد. روش بررسی: در این مطالعه تجربی، ساختار هموگلوبین انسانی در حضور و عدم حضور داروی اگزالی پالادیوم در شرایط آزمایشگاهی مورد مطالعه قرار گرفت. برای مطالعه تغییرات ساختاری و تخریب هِم، طیف جذبی هموگلوبین در محدوده طول موج های 200 تا 700 نانومتر بررسی گردید. همچنین جهت بررسی دقیقتر تغییرات در ساختار سه بعدی هموگلوبین و احتمال بررسی تخریب هِم، مطالعات طیف سنجی فلوئورسانس در دو دمای محیط و فیزیولوژیک انجام گرفت. یافته‌ها: اضافه کردن غلظت های مختلف داروی اگزالی پالادیوم به هموگلوبین باعث افزایش جذب در طول موج 280 نانومتر و کاهش جذب در طول موج 415 نانومتر (مربوط به پیک سورت) گردید. همچنین باعث کاهش فاحشی در شدت نشر فلوئورسانس ذاتی و افزایش شدت نشر فلوئورسانس محصولات حاصل از تخریب هِم در هموگلوبین در هر دو دمای مورد مطالعه گردید. نتیجه گیری: بر اساس نتایج این مطالعه که داروی اگزالی پالادیوم باعث تغییرات ساختاری و عملکردی در هموگلوبین از طریق جداسازی و تخریب گروه هِم می شود و بدین ترتیب می تواند در بیمار تحت درمان، ایجاد کم خونی نماید