مجله دانشکده پزشکی اصفهان
پیاپی 683 (هفته سوم مهر 1401)

Neurodegenerative diseases lead to the death of neurons and dysfunction of the nervous system. Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs) can be used in the regeneration of neuronal cells. Curcumin is the active ingredient of Curcuma longa. The purpose of this study was to examine neurogenerative induction effects of curcumin on the BM-MSCs.

The MSCs were extracted from rats. The cytotoxic effects of curcumin on the MSCs were evaluated by MTT assay. For the purpose of evaluating the induction of neuron differentiation, BM-MSCs were cultured with pre-induction medium for 24 h and then in inductive medium containing curcumin or BHA and DMSO (positive control). The results were evaluated by examining cell morphology via inverted microscope.

The results of the MTT test showed that curcumin (1, 5 and 10 μM) did not affect the growth rate of MSC cells. The results of induction of neuron differentiation showed that the differentiation of BM-MSCs cells was visible from the second hour under treatment with curcumin. While, during the fourth hour onwards, the BM-MSCs were transformed into spherical neurosphere masses like those that were treated in the positive control group.

Curcumin with a suitable inducing effect on the differentiation of MSC into neural progenitor cells can be considered as a potential agent for further studies to introduce an effective drug in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

Some devices, such as oxygen therapy tubes and pulse oximeter probes, are the main cause of pressure sores in the ear area. This study was conducted with the aim of comparing the effect of hydrocolloid dressing and transparent film on the prevention of pressure ulcers caused by oxygen therapy equipment in patients hospitalized in special care units.

The present study was a clinical trial on 60 patients admitted to the intensive care units of 9th Dey Torbat-e-Heydariyeh Hospital who were selected by simple and purposeful admission criteria and divided into two groups: transparent film dressing and hydrocolloid dressing. Allocated in 2019, done. The intervention groups were dressed for three days using hydrocolloid dressings and transparent film for two days and were monitored twice for pressure ulcer.

The findings of this study showed the positive effect of using hydrocolloid dressings and transparent film in preventing pressure ulcers. Also, the comparison of these two dressings in the prevention of pressure ulcers showed no significant difference in the effect of these dressings.

The results of this study showed that the use of new dressings can be effective in preventing pressure ulcers.

Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging is widely implemented in nuclear medicine for detecting coronary artery diseases. To increase the accuracy of the diagnosis, it is necessary to improve the quality of the SPECT images that can be degraded by noise. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of using different filters such as Butterworth, Gaussian, Wiener with kernel sizes 3×3 and 5×5, and Median Modified Wiener Filters (MMWF with kernel sizes 3×3 and 5×5 to improve the quality of myocardial perfusion SPECT images with 99mTc-MIBI.

A Siemens Symbia T2 dual head SPECT/CT scanner equipped with a low-energy and high-resolution collimator (LEHR) was used for collecting data for this cross-sectional-applied study. The noise ratio (SNR), peak to noise ratio (PSNR) and contrast to noise ratio (CNR) were the indices used to asses the quality of the myocardial perfusion SPECT images of 30 patients after the filters mentioned above have been applied to the images.

Wiener filter with kernel size of 5×5 4.90 ± 0.69 and 2.65 ± 0.57 were found be the highest SNR and CNR indices respectively. However, it had the lowest PSNR in the range of 29.93 ± 3.13 (dB). In addition, the highest PSNR values were associated with the Gaussian filter as 50.09 ± 10.63 (dB).

The results of this study show that the wiener filter of kernel size of 5×5 outperformed the others to improve the quality of myocardial perfusion SPECT images used in this study.