Association of anthropometric measures with cardiovascular risk factors and metabolic syndrome in normal-weight children and adolescents: The CASPIAN III study

Objective: This nationwide study was conducted to determine the association of anthropometric measures with cardiovascular risk factors and metabolic syndrome (MetS) in Iranian normal-weight children and adolescents. Methods: We analyzed the data of 3,565 children and adolescents (50.3 boys), aged 10-18 years, with a normal BMI (5th-84th percentile) obtained from the third survey of 'Childhood and Adolescence Surveillance and Prevention of Adult Non-communicable Disease' (CASPIAN III) study. The diagnostic criteria for MetS were defined by the International Diabetes Federation consensus. Results: The prevalence of MetS for 10- to 13.9-year-old boys, 14- to 18-year-old boys, 10- to 13.9-year-old girls, and 14- to 18-year-old girls were 1.4, 2.8, 2.3, and 3.3, respectively. After adjustment for age and sex, each unit increase in BMI (within normal range) and waist circumference increased the odds of MetS from 6 to 72 and from 1 to 20, respectively. The dominant pattern of dyslipidemia among the participants was high triglycerides and low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Conclusion: This study complements recent research about the high frequency of metabolic risk factors among normal-weight individuals in the pediatric age group. © 2013 S. Karger GmbH, Freiburg

Nutrition and lung cancer: a case control study in Iran

Background: Despite many prospective and retrospective studies about the association of dietary habit and lung cancer, the topic still remains controversial. So, this study aims to investigate the association of lung cancer with dietary factors. Method: In this study 242 lung cancer patients and their 484 matched controls on age, sex, and place of residence were enrolled between October 2002 to 2005. Trained physicians interviewed all participants with standardized questionnaires. The middle and upper third consumer groups were compared to the lower third according to the distribution in controls unless the linear trend was significant across exposure groups. Result: Conditional logistic regression was used to evaluate the association with lung cancer. In a multivariate analysis fruit (Ptrend < 0.0001), vegetable (P = 0.001) and sunflower oil (P = 0.006) remained as protective factors and rice (P = 0.008), bread (Ptrend = 0.04), liver (P = 0.004), butter (Ptrend = 0.04), white cheese (Ptrend < 0.0001), beef (Ptrend = 0.005), vegetable ghee (P < 0.0001) and, animal ghee (P = 0.015) remained as risk factors of lung cancer. Generally, we found positive trend between consumption of beef (P = 0.002), bread (P < 0.0001), and dairy products (P < 0.0001) with lung cancer. In contrast, only fruits were inversely related to lung cancer (P < 0.0001). Conclusion: It seems that vegetables, fruits, and sunflower oil could be protective factors and bread, rice, beef, liver, dairy products, vegetable ghee, and animal ghee found to be possible risk factors for the development of lung cancer in Iran

C-Terminal Domain Deletion Enhances the Protective Activity of cpa/cpb Loaded Solid Lipid Nanoparticles against Leishmania major in BALB/c Mice

Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is the most common form of leishmaniasis with an annual incidence of approximately 2 million cases and is endemic in 88 countries, including Iran. CL's continued spread, along with rather ineffectual treatments and drug-resistant variants emergence has increased the need for advanced preventive strategies. We studied Type II cysteine proteinase (CPA) and Type I (CPB) with its C-terminal extension (CTE) as cocktail DNA vaccine against murine and canine leishmaniasis. However, adjuvants' success in enhancing immune responses to selected antigens led us to refocus our vaccine development programs. Herein, we discuss cationic solid lipid nanoparticles' (cSLN) ability to improve vaccine-induced protective efficacy against CL and subsequent lesion size and parasite load reduction in BALB/c mice. For this work, we evaluated five different conventional as well as novel parasite detection techniques, i.e., footpad imaging, footpad flowcytometry and lymph node flowcytometry for disease progression assessments. Vaccination with cSLN-cpa/cpb-CTE formulation showed highest parasite inhibition at 3-month post vaccination. Immunized mice showed reduced IL-5 level and significant IFN-ã increase, compared to control groups. We think our study represents a potential future and a major step forward in vaccine development against leishmaniasis

Predicting Parkinson\u27s Disease Progression with Smartphone Data

Most of the existing approaches for detecting diseases/risk score form observations (sensor and textual) ignore the presence of any prior knowledge of the disease. In this work, we start top-down by enumerating the symptoms of Parkinson\u27s Disease (PD) and map the symptoms to its possible manifestations in sensor observations (bottom-up). We show such manifestations and further use these manifestations as features to build classifiers to differentiate between the PD patients and the control group

Tannic acid as a natural antioxidant compound: Discovery of a potent metabolic enzyme inhibitor for a new therapeutic approach in diabetes and Alzheimer's disease

PubMed: 30974029Multiple studies have been recorded on the synthesis and design of multi-aim anti-Alzheimer molecules. Using dual butyrylcholinesterase/acetylcholinesterase inhibitor molecules has attracted more interest in the therapy for Alzheimer's disease. In this study, a tannic acid compound showed excellent inhibitory effects against acetylcholine esterase (AChE), ?-glycosidase, ?-amylase, and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE). IC50 values of tannic acid obtained 11.9 nM against ?-glycosidase and 3.3 nM against ?-amylase, respectively. In contrast, Ki values were found of 50.96 ± 2.18 µM against AChE and 53.17 ± 4.47 µM against BChE. ?-Glycosidase inhibitor compounds can be utilized as a novel group of antidiabetic drugs. By competitively decreasing glycosidase activity, these inhibitor molecules help to hamper the fast breakdown of sugar molecules and thereby control the blood sugar level. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Retraction Note: Suppressor capacity of copper nanoparticles biosynthesized using Crocus sativus L. leaf aqueous extract on methadone-induced cell death in adrenal phaeochromocytoma (PC12) cell line

Editor's Note: this Article has been retracted; the Retraction Note is available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-77741-4

Suppressor capacity of copper nanoparticles biosynthesized using Crocus sativus L. leaf aqueous extract on methadone-induced cell death in adrenal phaeochromocytoma (PC12) cell line

In this research, we prepared and formulated a neuroprotective supplement (copper nanoparticles in aqueous medium utilizing Crocus sativus L. Leaf aqueous extract) for determining its potential against methadone-induced cell death in PC12. The results of chemical characterization tests i.e., FE-SEM, FT-IR, XRD, EDX, TEM, and UV-Vis spectroscopy revealed that the study showed that copper nanoparticles were synthesized in the perfect way possible. In the TEM and FE-SEM images, the copper nanoparticles were in the mean size of 27.5 nm with the spherical shape. In the biological part of the present research, the Rat inflammatory cytokine assay kit was used to measure the concentrations of inflammatory cytokines. Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) test was used to show DNA fragmentation and apoptosis. Caspase-3 activity was assessed by the caspase activity colorimetric assay kit and mitochondrial membrane potential was studied by Rhodamine123 fluorescence dye. Also, the cell viability of PC12 was measured by trypan blue assay. Copper nanoparticles-treated cell cutlers significantly (p <= 0.01) decreased the inflammatory cytokines concentrations, caspase-3 activity, and DNA fragmentation and they raised the cell viability and mitochondrial membrane potential in the high concentration of methadone-treated PC12 cells. The best result of neuroprotective properties was seen in the high dose of copper nanoparticles i.e., 4 mu g. According to the above results, copper nanoparticles containing C. sativus leaf aqueous extract can be used in peripheral nervous system treatment as a neuroprotective promoter and central nervous system after approving in the clinical trial studies in humans