Electrocardiographic Findings in Patients with Acute Methadone Poisoning

Background:Methadone as a synthetic opioid is widely used for treatment of opioid dependency. One of the causes of methadone related sudden death is cardiac toxicity. This study was aimed to determine the electrocardiographic changes in acute methadone poisoning.Methods: This is a cross sectional study on patients older than 12 years old with acute methadone poisoning who were admitted in Loghman poisoning center at 2010-2011. Data analysis was done by means of SPSS version 16 and appropriate statistical tests at the significant level of P<0.05.Results: In one year period, 51 patients with mean age of 40.59±18.27 (31-51) years, including 39 males, with acute methadone poisoning were included in to the study. Seven patients (13.7%) were acutely poisoned, 29 patients (56.8%) had acute on chronic methadone poisoning and others had not reliable history. The mean time of PR, QRS and QTc were 150.2±34.22, 77.06±13.89 and 421.76±43.04ms, respectively. The prolongation of PR, QRS and QTc were observed in 9.8%, 1.96% and 17.6% of patients, respectively. A significant statistical association was observed between PR prolongation and type of poisoning and QRS prolongation and outcome (P=0.035 and 0.009).Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate the occurrence of cardiac toxicity in patients with acute methadone poisoning. Further studies are required on acute methadone poisoning in patients with known previous cardiac status

Asymptotic entanglement in 1D quantum walks with a time-dependent coined

Discrete-time quantum walk evolve by a unitary operator which involves two operators a conditional shift in position space and a coin operator. This operator entangles the coin and position degrees of freedom of the walker. In this paper, we investigate the asymptotic behavior of the coin position entanglement (CPE) for an inhomogeneous quantum walk which determined by two orthogonal matrices in one-dimensional lattice. Free parameters of coin operator together provide many conditions under which a measurement perform on the coin state yield the value of entanglement on the resulting position quantum state. We study the problem analytically for all values that two free parameters of coin operator can take and the conditions under which entanglement becomes maximal are sought.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in IJMPB. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1001.5326 by other author

Estimation of Nursing Staff in Selected Hospitals of Ilam and Ahvaz Provinces, Western Iran

Background: The nurses as the largest group among different groups of hospital workforce play a crucial role in success of the hospital activities and promotion of community health. Objectives: This study aimed to obtain an estimation of the necessary nursing workforce status in educational hospitals affiliated to Ilam and Ahvaz University of Medical Sciences based on the scientific formula. Materials and Methods: This research was a cross sectional-descriptive study, which was done in hospitals affiliated to Ilam and Ahvaz University of Medical Sciences during 2010. Using three researcher-made forms, data was collected from all clinical, para-clinical, financial, administrative and support departments of hospitals. Data was analyzed in accordance to the standards of Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education using the Excel software. Results: The results showed that the nursing staffs in the 42 wards (89.5 %) were lower than the standards, only one ward (2 %) matched the standards and the rest of the wards (8.5%) were higher than the standards. The organizational dislocation (utilization of nurses in non-related jobs) of nursing staffs obtained for Imam Khomeini of Ilam, Mostafa Khomeini, Taleghani, Razi and Imam Khomeini of Ahvaz Hospitals were 8, 5, 3, 8 and 21, respectively. Conclusion: Generally, the studied hospitals were faced with a lack of nursing manpower and distribution of manpower was not appropriate. Proper planning and management of manpower in accordance with the lack of personnel, compensates and achieves the standards required for hospital’s nursing manpower and this would lead to an increase in the efficiency of hospitals activities and can provide satisfaction for the nursing staff

A 3D printed drug delivery implant formed from a dynamic supramolecular polyurethane formulation

Using a novel molecular design approach, we have prepared a thermo-responsive supramolecular polyurethane as a matrix material for use in drug eluting implants. The dynamic supramolecular polyurethane (SPU) is able to self-assemble through hydrogen bonding and π-π stacking interactions, resulting in an addressable polymer network with a relatively low processing temperature. The mechanical properties of the SPU demonstrated the material was self-supporting, stiff, yet flexible thus making it suitable for hot-melt extrusion processing, inclusive of related 3D printing approaches. Cell-based toxicity assays revealed the SPU to be non-toxic and therefore a viable candidate as a biocompatible polymer for implant applications. To this end, the SPU was formulated with paracetamol (16 %w/w) and 4 wt% or 8 wt% poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) as an excipient and hot melt extruded at 100 °C to afford a 3D printed prototype implant to explore the extended drug release required for an implant and the potential manipulation of the release profile. Furthermore, rheological, infra-red spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy studies revealed the chemical and physical properties and compatibility of the formulation components. Successful release of paracetamol was achieved from in vitro dissolution studies and it was predicted that the drug would be released over a period of up to 8.5 months with hydrophilic PEG being able to influence the release rate. This extended release time is consistent with applications of this novel dynamic polymer as a drug eluting implant matrix

Prevalence of human respiratory syncytial virus circulating in Iran

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a leading cause of acute respiratory infection during early childhood and is associated with a great burden on patients, parents, and society. While no treatment is yet available, results from recent phase 2 clinical trials of cell-entry inhibitors and RSV vaccines are promising. To prepare for introduction of these novel therapeutics, good understanding of its molecular epidemiology and continuous RSV surveillance data are necessary. This paper provides an overview of RSV prevalence and genotype distribution in Iran from 1996 to 2013. This meta-analysis includes 21 published studies. In total, 775 (18.7) of 4140 respiratory specimens were positive for RSV infection. The male-female ratio of RSV-positive patients was 1.5:1. Significant peaks of RSV infection were detected during the cold season (November-March). RSV infection was mainly observed in patients <2 years of age. Phylogenetic studies showed that genotypes GA1, GA2, GA5, and BA co-circulated in Iran in 2007-2013. This review highlights the necessity of introducing standard molecular surveillance programs to inform the epidemiological, clinical, and pathological characteristics of various RSV genotypes. Improved understanding of the molecular epidemiology will be useful for development of novel RSV therapeutics. © 2015 King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences

The effect of large-decoherence on mixing-time in Continuous-time quantum walks on long-range interacting cycles

In this paper, we consider decoherence in continuous-time quantum walks on long-range interacting cycles (LRICs), which are the extensions of the cycle graphs. For this purpose, we use Gurvitz's model and assume that every node is monitored by the corresponding point contact induced the decoherence process. Then, we focus on large rates of decoherence and calculate the probability distribution analytically and obtain the lower and upper bounds of the mixing time. Our results prove that the mixing time is proportional to the rate of decoherence and the inverse of the distance parameter (\emph{m}) squared. This shows that the mixing time decreases with increasing the range of interaction. Also, what we obtain for \emph{m}=0 is in agreement with Fedichkin, Solenov and Tamon's results \cite{FST} for cycle, and see that the mixing time of CTQWs on cycle improves with adding interacting edges.Comment: 16 Pages, 2 Figure