Effects of melatonin supplementation on disease activity,oxidative stress,inflammatory, and metabolic parameters in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial

Clinical Rheumatology - Considering the pathologic significance of inflammation and oxidative stress in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) as well as the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and hypolipidemic...     

Administration of Selenium Nanoparticles Reverses Streptozotocin-Induced Neurotoxicity in the male rats

Metabolic Brain Disease - Alzheimer’s disease is the most common neurodegenerative disease associated with deposition of amyloid-beta and the increased oxidative stress. High free radical...     

Efficacy of tight control strategy in the treatment of adult-onset Still disease

Clinical Rheumatology - Adult-onset Still’s disease (AOSD) characterized by a high spiking fever, skin rash, arthritis, and leukocytosis. The aim of the present study was considering the...     

A novel non-linear recursive filter design for extracting high rate pulse features in nuclear medicine imaging and spectroscopy

Applications in imaging and spectroscopy rely on pulse processing methods for appropriate data generation. Often, the particular method utilized does not highly impact data quality, whereas in some scenarios, such as in the presence of high count rates or high frequency pulses, this issue merits extra consideration. In the present study, a new approach for pulse processing in nuclear medicine imaging and spectroscopy is introduced and evaluated. The new non-linear recursive filter (NLRF) performs nonlinear processing of the input signal and extracts the main pulse characteristics, having the powerful ability to recover pulses that would ordinarily result in pulse pile-up. The filter design defines sampling frequencies lower than the Nyquist frequency.In the literature, for systems involving NaI(Tl) detectors and photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), with a signal bandwidth considered as 15 MHz, the sampling frequency should be at least 30 MHz (the Nyquist rate), whereas in the present work, a sampling rate of 3.3 MHz was shown to yield very promising results. This was obtained by exploiting the known shape feature instead of utilizing a general sampling algorithm. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed filter enhances count rates in spectroscopy. With this filter, the system behaves almost identically as a general pulse detection system with a dead time considerably reduced to the new sampling time (300 ns). Furthermore, because of its unique feature for determining exact event times, the method could prove very useful in time-of-flight PET imaging.     

Fascial Repair of Laparoscopic Ports with Allis–Hemostat Technique

Port site hernias are one of the most serious complications associated with laparoscopic surgery. In this study, we present a simple and reliable method for port site closure in laparoscopic surgery. From 2005 to 2011, 500 patients who underwent laparoscopic surgery were enrolled for the study. They were evaluated considering age, sex, indication of laparoscopic surgery, and early and late complications of port site and were followed up at least for 1 year after the surgery. In our study, 180 males and 320 females with mean age of 36 years were enrolled. The most common indication for laparoscopic surgery was cholecystectomy in 320 patients (64 %). There were no early or late complications of port site after surgery. Our method is a new modification of the procedure presented by Spalding. Using Allis forceps and putting it under the fascia seems to be a more suitable technique which facilitates the laparoscopic port repair. We found it to be extremely safe, simple, and easy to teach.     

Investigation of Helicobacter pylori infection in beta-thalassaemia major patients with recurrent abdominal pain

BACKGROUND: Recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) affects many children, especially those affected by beta-thalassaemia major. The role of Helicobacter pylori is still unclear in children with RAP. OBJECTIVES: The aim of the present study was the comparison of beta-thalassaemia major patients and normal controls with RAP in H. pylori infection. The factors influencing H. pylori prevalence were also investigated. METHODS: A series of 50 beta-thalassaemia major cases (30 female, 20 male; aged 6-25 years) and 50 age-matched and sex-matched controls, both presenting with RAP, were recruited during a period of 18 months. The study participants were obtained through a multistage random sampling method among those that met Apley's criteria. All the patients and controls had undergone diagnostic oesophagogastroduodenoscopy with biopsy. H. pylori infection was confirmed by two histopathological examinations on an endoscopy sample and a rapid urease test. RESULTS: H. pylori infection in thalassaemic patients was more common than in controls [34/50 (68%) versus 30/50 (60%)], but this higher frequency was not statistically significant. A clear relationship was found between the prevalence of H. pylori and age, duration of transfusion/chelation programmes, pain duration and splenectomy. In contrast, H. pylori did not correlate with abdominal pain characteristics, blood group, serum ferritin level and pathology of the upper gastrointestinal tract. The most frequent endoscopy abnormality was gastritis (72%). Nausea and heartburn were the leading associated symptoms. CONCLUSION: The high prevalence of H. pylori infection suggests that H. pylori should be remembered as a probable cause of RAP in beta-thalassaemia major patients.