marzieh salehi

Using natural colors in the food and pharmaceutical industries is very important. Natural colorants obtained from animals, plants and microorganisms are a promising alternative to artificial food colors because synthetic colors have a negative effect on human health in the long term. Phycocyanin is used as a natural blue and water-soluble colorant instead of artificial blue food dyes, which, in addition to coloring food, have potential useful properties as antioxidants and anticancer agents and have received scientific and industrial attention. Phycocyanin is extracted from microalgae such as spirulina and has a health-giving role against various conditions such as cancer, anemia, inflammation, diabetes, obesity and neurological disorders. It has also gained popularity due to its various applications in various food and pharmaceutical industries. This research has discussed an overview of the biotechnological production of phycocyanin edible blue colorant from spirulina microalgae, microbial culture, extraction, purification, stability methods, and its applications.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID?19) pandemic in Iran has led to a lack of intensive care unit (ICU) facilities. This study examines C?reactive protein (CRP), D?dimer, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), and troponin in ICU patients with COVID?19 in comparison to COVID?19 patients admitted to the wards in Iran.

In a case–control study, troponin, CRP, ESR, and D?dimer were compared in the case samples of 109 COVID?19 patients admitted to the ICU, and in the control group, 140 COVID?19 patients admitted to the wards.

The mean of CRP (P < 0.001) and D?dimer (P < 0.001) was higher, whereas troponin (P < 0.001) was lower in patients admitted to the ICU, but no significant difference was observed between the values of ESR (P = 0.292) in the two groups.

This study showed that the values of CRP and D?dimer were higher in patients admitted to the ICU, but no significant difference was observed between the values of ESR in the two groups.

The role of anti‑phospholipid antibodies (aPLs) in the prognosis of COVID‑19 patients is controversial. In order to prove the role of this factor, the necessary measures such as early initiation of anticoagulants should be started even in the early stages of the disease and in outpatients or the use of other drugs in addition to anticoagulants. We decided to investigate the role of these antibodies in ICU admission outcomes in critically ill COVID‑19 patients.

The case‑control study was carried out in Isfahan, Iran, from March to September 2021. One hundred nine patients in the case group were selected, including patients admitted to the ICU with a COVID‑19 diagnosis. The 140 patients in the control group were selected from hospitalized and outpatients with COVID‑19 with PCR + and pulmonary involvement, similar to the case group without the need for ICU hospitalization. The anti B2GP1 (IgM, IgG) and anti‑cardiolipin (IgM, IgG)) were compared in two groups.

The frequency percentage of patients in the abnormal group of anti‑phospholipid antibodies was about 10% in total. No statistically significant difference in these aPLs in continued measures was observed between the two groups of patients admitted to the ICU and those outside the ICU. Also, in the logistics regression analysis, no significant association was observed.

Therefore, the cause of coagulation in patients admitted to the ICU is not related to these aPLs. This means that aPLs could not be a good predictor of patient admission to the ICU.

We aimed to investigate the frequency of seizure after acute carbamazepine poisoning and the important risk factors related to the outcomes of therapy.

In this two-year cross‑sectional study conducted in a University Hospital in Iran, 114 patients with acute carbamazepine poisoning were divided into two groups of with seizure (n = 8) and without seizure (n = 106) after intoxication. Demographic data, average amount of drug ingestion, time elapsed from ingestion to hospital admission, history of seizure before poisoning, mental status, visual disturbances and nystagmus, duration of hospitalization, the outcomes of therapy, arterial blood gas values and serum biochemical indices were compared between the two groups.

Patients with seizure had an estimated (Mean ± SD) ingestion of 14,300 ± 570 mg carbamazepine, which was significantly higher (P < 0.0001) than the seizure‑free group (4600 ± 420 mg). The estimated average time between drug ingestion and hospital admission in patients with seizure and the seizure‑free group were 515 ± 275 and 370 ± 46 minutes, respectively (P < 0.0001). In this study, 104 out of the total number of patients had recovered without any complication. Need for respiratory support, including airway support or intubation were the most recorded complication. One patient died after status epilepticus and aspiration pneumonia.

The ingested amount of carbamazepine and the time elapsed from the ingestion of drug to hospital admission may influence the occurrence of seizure after acute carbamazepine poisoning; however, the outcome of supportive care in these patients seems to be positive

Conventional hepatitis B virus vaccination fails to achieve efficient protection in about 5%–10% of the world population. Different factors influence the immunogenicity of hepatitis B vaccine. This study aimed to evaluate these factors in health‑care workers.

This was a descriptive study which was implemented among 140 of medical and dental staff working as health‑care workers who were low responder after vaccination entered the study.

Age (>40 years), weight (body mass index >25), immunodeficiency diseases, (primary immune deficiency and immunosuppressant drugs), diabetes mellitus, and smoking were the important factors.

In the high‑risk group of hepatitis B disease, the risk factors of immunogenicity must be evaluated at vaccination and check titers of antibody after vaccination.

Brain drain is one of the challenges facing many countries that are facing with that many countries and from it get memory to as a traumatic event in countries.Therefore, the assessment of the causes of brain drain is necessary and inevitable. One of the issues that can affect the flow of elites from developing countries is the high technology export development. Because the demand for specialized and educated labor increases with increasing exports of high-tech products and prevents from the exit of the scientific elite. Therefore, the main purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of high technology export development on brain drain from the selected countries of the MENA region to the United States during the period 2000-2016 using the generalized-moments method (GMM). The results of the study showed that there is a negative and significant effect between high technology export development index and brain drain in selected countries of the MENA region. Also, there is a positive and significant relation between indicators of welfare gap and the actual wage gap and brain drain in selected countries of the MENA region. Unemployment rate of graduates has also a positive and meaningless effect on brain drain.
JEL Classification: F22, F40, O31, C33.

Handwritten digit recognition, as an important issue in pattern classification, has received considerable attention of many researchers to develop theoretical and practical aspects of this problem. The goal is to recognize a printed digit text or a scanned handwritten using an automated procedure. In this paper an optical character recognition system with a multi-step procedure is presented for Farsi handwritten digit classification. First, a pre-processing course is performed on the image to enhance and make prepare the image for the main steps. Then multiple features are extracted which are believed to be effective in the classification step, among which a multi-objective genetic algorithm selects those with more discriminative characteristics in order to reduce the computational complexity of the classification steps. Following this, only the selected features are extracted from the digit images to be entered to three classifiers. Once the classifiers are trained, their outputs are fed into a classifier ensemble to make the final decision. The weights of the linear combination of classifiers are adjusted by an evolutionary firefly algorithm which optimizes the F-criterion. Evaluation of the proposed technique on the standard HODA database demonstrates that the algorithm of this paper attains higher performance indices including F-measure of 98.88%, compared to other existing methods.

Reading disorder (RD) is one of the important complaints in children with learning disorders (LD) that is prevalent in 4% of children in the United States. Treating this disorder includes education of reading practices and treating psychological disorders, and there are no exact medications prescribed in these children. Memantine has been e?ective in treating memory problems in Alzheimer Dementia, obsessive–compulsive disorder, autism disorder, and other psychological diseases. Te aim of this study is to evaluate the e?ect of memantine in improving RD in children.
In this randomized clinical trial, 62 children, with RD in Pediatric Psychiatry Clinics of Noor and Ali-Asghar Hospital in Isfahan from 2015 to 2016, were participated. Tey were randomly assigned to two groups of equal number, one receiving education plus memantine and the other education plus placebo. RD was evaluated at the beginning, 1 and 3 months after intervention by Iranian standard reading and dyslexia test(Nama).
Mean (standard deviation) age of participants was 7.55 (0.60) years. Most of the participants were boy (55%), most having parents in 36–45-year-old age group (52% and 48% for fathers and mothers, respectively), and also most parents in diploma and bachelor educational group (61% and 60% for fathers and mothers, respectively). Tere were statistical signifcant di?erence in trend of total score (P = 0.034), word chain (P Adding memantine to educational practices is e?ective in improving RD in school-age children with LD.

The role of entrepreneurship as an important economic phenomenon is obvious. Since each community is involved in the production of wealth as well as development of technology, and productive employment, special attention should be paid to entrepreneurship. In this regard, this study aimed to investigate the status of entrepreneurship among students of healthcare management in Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences.
This descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted in 2014. The population included all healthcare management MSc and BSc students in Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences (n = 80). Furthermore, the required data were gathered by using a standard questionnaire; the validity and reliability of which have already proven. Data were then analyzed by descriptive statistical methods in SPSS 16.
Among dimensions of entrepreneurship, the highest average belonged to the internal control with the mean score of 3.93 ± 0.59, while dimension of risk sharing had the lowest average by mean score of 3.20 ± 0.61. According to Pearson correlation coefficient a significant correlation was observed between dimensions of risk sharing and independence (p = 0.001) and also between the dimensions of achievement (p = 0.001) and internal control (p = 0.003).
Since students have good rates of determination, their spirits can be nourished with creativity, achievement motivation, risk taking, and independence through entrepreneurship education, especially behavioral education. It is obvious that the purpose of entrepreneurship educations can be noted as transferring knowledge and building skills in students. Finally, this training should create an entrepreneurial attitude in them.

Since it is not possible to accurately predict the time of earthquake, knowledge and preparedness of hospitals in relation to earthquake and strategies of facing earthquake are of a particular importance. The aim of this study was to evaluate the rate of earthquake preparedness in hospitals affiliated to Yazd University of Medical Sciences.
This was a cross-sectional descriptive-analytic study performed in four hospitals affiliated to Yazd University of Medical Sciences in 2015. A checklist including123 questions evaluating the safety of hospitals in facing earthquake in eight dimensions were used Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation and through SPSS16 statistical software package.
The hospitals’ preparedness against earthquake disaster was 58.87%. The highest rate of preparedness was found for dimension of disaster management plans and the lowest rate of preparedness was related to the dimension of hospital training plans (89.08% vs. 25%). The highest correlation was between the number of hospital beds and the dimension of safety of hospital equipments (r=.987) and the lowest correlation was between the number of hospital beds and the training plans (r=.271).
Generally, hospitals preparedness against earthquake was at a moderate level and since the lowest level of preparedness against earthquake was in the dimension of educational planning, implementation of training courses should be considered as a priority.

Mastitis is an inflammatory disorder in breast tissues due to bacterial factors, mycobacterial infections or autoimmune diseases. Idiopathic granulomatous mastitis (IGM) is a form of mastitis which may be affected by systematic diseases such as sarcoidosis, and infectious causes such as mycobacterium and fungus. This study evaluates the efficacy of medical therapy with a combination of corticosteroid and Azithromycin in patients with IGM.

This study is a clinical trial research carried out in Alzahra Hospital (Isfahan, Iran) in 2013 on granulomatous mastitis patients. It was administered 250 mg of Azithromycin per 12 hour and 60 mg of Prednisolone per day within 2 weeks. Next, they took 40 mg/day within 8 weeks, and this dosage was tapered during 6 months and the patients clinically and radiologically followed up. The studied patients were examined within 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months, from the beginning of treatment.

This study investigated granulomatous mastitis patients in Alzahra hospital in 2013. The mean age of these patients was 33.6 ± 8.9, and their age range was 18–56 years old. Among 26 studied patients, 24 persons (92.3%) according to follow‑up the patients by physical examination and sonography responded to treatment of corticosteroid and Azithromycin. The remaining (7.7%) underwent surgery. Treatment periods in case of drug use were respectively, 8.5 ± 0.71 months.

Treatment with corticosteroid and Azithromycin is an effective and appropriate treatment for IGM.

The impact of increased public health spending on economic-social performance of society and especially the importance and its role in providing and ensuring sustainable development in developing and developed countries, has been interest of economists and politicians since past to present. For this purpose, many patterns attempted to identify the factors affecting growth of per capita public health spending and to explain their impact. Due to the vital role of per capita public health spending on economic development, current study using the generalized method of moments (GMM) has paid to investigate improving the management of oil wealth abundance on public health spending in the selected oil and developed countries during the period 1996-2012. The evidences indicate that efficient, intelligent and prospective management of oil resources have important role in increasing per capita public health spending in both groups studied selected oil and developed countries. This represents a serious move for selected oil countries to improve the management of abundance of oil wealth. Furthermore study findings show that per capita GDP growth and consumer price index have a positive and significant impact on growth of public health spending in oil and developed countries. Also results show that income inequality has a negative and significant impact on growth of per capita public health spending in both groups of countries.

Conventional hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccination fails to achieve efficient protection in about 5–10% of the world population. Hence, different strategies have been adopted to ameliorate HBV antibody titers. This study aimed to evaluate the concurrent application of tetanus‑diphtheria (Td) and HBV vaccination on hepatitis B surface (HBs) antibody titer in low‑responder healthy individuals.
This was a randomized clinical trial, which was implemented among 140 of medical staff working as health‑care workers assumed as low‑responders. The subjects were randomly allocated to either control or interventional groups. The control and interventional groups received HBV recombinant vaccine while the latter group was also vaccinated through Td. Enzyme‑linked immunosorbent assay was applied to measure HBs antibody (HBsAb) titers just before and 6 months after the last vaccination. All data were entered into SPSS software. Independent t‑test, paired t‑test, and Chi‑square or Fisher’s exact test were applied for data comparison.
Antibody titers of the subjects in the intervention and control groups soared from 49.08 ± 20.08 IU/L to 917.78 ± 204.80 IU/L and from 46.95 ± 18.55 to 586.81 ± 351.77 IU/L, respectively (both P Concurrent application of Td and HBV vaccine could effectively enhance protective levels of HBsAb titers in low‑responder individuals.

Objective and Breast cancer is considered as a heterogeneous disease, characterized by different biological and phenotypic features which make its diagnosis and treatment challenging. Here we sought to investigate the expression levels of key components of Hedgehog signaling pathway and correlation between the signal transducer Smo and some clinicopathological features such as lymph node metastasis and metastasis stage in invasive breast carcinoma. Also, the inverse correlation between the expression levels of Smo and Claudin-1 (an important gene involved in cell tight junctions) was studied.
In this case-control study, among 36 pairs of specimens, tumor tissues and their adjacent normal ones from patients with Invasive ductal breast carcinoma, the expression levels of Key components of Hedgehog signaling (Smo, Gli1 and Ptch), Claudin-1, E-cadherin, and MMP2 were measured by Q-RT-PCR. Also, the correlation of Smo expression with some clinicopathologic parameters was analyzed.
We found up-regulation of Hedgehog signaling in invasive breast carcinoma samples compared to normal adjacent tissues. Moreover, upregulation of the signal transducer Smo was correlated with tumor stages and lymph node metastasis of breast tumor. Interestingly, this correlation was affected by the expression of Her2. There is also a significant correlation between the expression levels of the signal transducer Smo and Claudin-1 (A gene involved in tight junctions), E-cadherin (Epithelial cell marker), and MMP2 (metastasis-related gene) in tumor samples with advanced stages of metastasis.
Taken together, our study revealed a new layer of molecular complexity which should be considered in the management of patients with invasive breast carcinoma. The results suggest a key role for Hedgehog signaling in invasive breast carcinoma. Also, regarding the inverse correlation between expression levels of Claudin-1 and Hedgehog signaling, it seems that Claudin-1 could serve as a diagnostic biomarker; however, its clinical significance remains to be further clarified.

Machine translation has been developed over last years. But this technology is still not able to exactly translate texts. Also post-editing the output may takes longer time than the translation process. So having a quality estimation of machine translation output can be very useful. Moreover, Confidence Estimation can be useful for some applications that their goal is to improve machine translation quality such as system combination, regenerating and pruning. But there is not yet any completely satisfactory method for CE task. We propose 5 syntactic and lexico-semantic features that are never used for confidence estimation task. The experimental results show that proposed lexico-semantic feature outperforms the best baseline system (2) by 9.63% in CER, 8.5% in F-measure and 5.1% in negative class F-measure. Moreover the combination of proposed syntactic features outperforms the best baseline system by 4.49% in CER, 4.1% in F-measure and 2% in negative class F-measure.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) fails to produce appropriate immune responses in some healthy individuals; thus, different strategies have been adopted to promote immune responses. The current study aimed at evaluating the efficacy of HBV vaccine coadministered with tetanus-diphtheria (Td) vaccine compared with HBV vaccine in healthy individuals through measuring hepatitis B surface antibody (HBsAb) levels. This was a randomized controlled clinical trial, which was implemented in Isfahan, Isfahan Province (Iran) in 2013. One hundred and forty healthy individuals, whose HBsAb titers were less than 10 IU/L were recruited. The subjects were randomly assigned to either in intervention or control trials. The control group received 40 µg of recombinant HBV vaccines intramuscularly injected at 0, 1, and 6 months; however, the intervention group was simultaneously vaccinated by Td with the first dose of HBV vaccine. HBV antibody levels (titer) were measured before the vaccination and 6 months after the last vaccination. Antibody titers of the subjects in the intervention and control groups increased from 5.07 ± 2.9 IU/L to 744.45 ± 353.07 IU/L and from 4.45 ± 3.4 IU/L to 589.94 ± 353 IU/L, respectively (both P < 0.001). Also, the mean difference of antibody titer was significantly different between the two groups (P = 0.011). Td vaccination can be applied as a feasible approach to promote efficient and persistent immunity in healthy individuals with insufficient HBsAb titers.

Idiopathic granulomatous mastitis (IGM) is defi ned as a rare, infl ammatory, chronic and benign disease mimicking malignant hyperplasia of mammary glands. Th ere is no defi nitive therapeutic strategy for IGM; nevertheless, some approaches can be exploited as benefi cial strategies. In this study, the surgery strategy was compared with coincident treatment with azithromycin and corticosteroid in IGM patients.

Th is study was implemented as clinical trial during 2011-2013 in Isfahan, Iran. Th e target population comprised women whose IGM was substantiated. Th e medical group consisted of 20 patients, which were compared with a historical control group treated through surgical approach. Surgical group comprised 39 patients. Partial mastectomy was implemented in the surgical group whereas treatment protocol comprising azithromycin and prednisolone administered in medical group. Recurrence of mass was followed for 12 months. Fischer exact test, Chi-square test, Mann-Whitney and regression tests were applied for statistical analysis. Th is study was registered in Iranian Registry of clinical trial (IRCT number: IRCT 2013123015999N1).

No signifi cant diff erences were recognized in side of lesions, lymphadenopathy, fever and pain; however, number of abscesses, number of lesions and size of lesions were signifi cantly higher in the surgical group (P < 0.0001). Furthermore, probability of relapse correlated with the number of lesions, (odds ratio = 24.67 confi dence interval [CI] = 2.2-269.3), whereas methods of IGM treatment did not contribute to the likelihood of relapse (odds ratio = 12.5 CI = 0.52-299).

Th is clinical trial demonstrated that pharmaceutical treatment has appropriate effi cacy, in treatment and prevention of IGM relapse. Moreover, this study presented hazf gardad number of the lesions as the most appropriate criteria for IGM prognosis, thus the probability of relapse decreases whether earlier IGM recognizing could be implemented.

Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) has high morbidity and mortality.Therefore the treatment effect of Ribavirin with and without intravenous Immunoglobulin (IVIG) in viral Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever was evaluated. In a clinical trial study, 40 patients with confirmatory positive serology test, 12 (30%) received Ribavirin and IVIG (case group) and 28 (70%) received only ribavirin as standards therapy (control group). The patients were followed and compared by defervescence and other clinical symptoms, and laboratory results such as white blood cell count (WBC), platelets; liver function test (LFT) and duration of hospitalization and mortality rate after eight weeks. The mean (SD) period for defervescence and stopping bleedings was five (0.6) days in case group and five (0.5) days in control group with no significant differences (P=0.27). The mean period for return of WBC to normal was three (0.6) days in case group and five (0.8) days in control group (P=0.002).The mean period for return of LFT to normal was three (0.9) days in case group and seven (0.5) days in control group which showed a meaningful difference (P=0.001).Normalization of platelets was returned within four (0.8) days in case group compared to 6 (0.6) days in control group. Mortality was observed in three cases of each group. Considering our results, using IVIG in viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) may need further evaluations.

Poisoning with carbamazepine is the third most common reason for status epilepticus seizure in the poisoning ward of Nour Hospital (Isfahan, Iran). No survey has been performed on the frequency of seizure among patients poisoned with carbamazepine. The relationship of such toxicity and other effective variables and treatment outcome have not been studied either. This study aimed to identify factors affecting seizure due to carbamazepine toxicity in order to help physicians make the correct decisions. In a retrospective study, information of every patient with carbamazepine toxicity who had been admitted in Nour Hospital was collected by census sampling method. Patients were then divided into two groups of with and without seizures. The two groups were compared using independent-t and Fisher's exact tests in SPSS15. During 1 year, 114 cases were admitted and 7% of cases experienced seizures. The mean dose of drugs and pH levels were significantly different between the two groups. The frequency of patients who were discharged with a complication or died was higher in the seizure group. Using high doses of carbamazepine increases the risk for seizure among poisoned individuals. In addition, patients with seizure are at higher risk for acidosis, complications, and death.

Epicardial fat tissue is known as a risk factor in cardiovascular diseases. This study was designed to compare the epicardial fat thickness in patients with cardiovascular diseases and normal patients. It also tried to find a correlation between epicardial fat thickness and severity of coronary stenosis. This study was conducted from September 2010 to April 2011 at two university hospitals (Noor and Chamran Referral centers) associated to Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran. A total number of 196 subjects were allocate to three groups of control (n = 68), acute coronary syndrome (n = 64) and chronic stable angina (n = 64). After registering demographic data, all individuals underwent echocardiography in diastolic subcostal view to determine the epicardial fat thickness. Angiography was also conducted to assess the severity of coronary stenosis. The thickness of epicardial fat was compared between groups and its correlations with age, sex, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, waist circumference, body mass index and severity of coronary stenosis were evaluated. The mean age of participants was 59.54 ± 11.01 years. There were statistical differences between age, sex, smoking and severity of coronary stenosis (P < 0.001, P = 0.03, P = 0.04, and P < 0.001, respectively). The mean of epicardial fat thickness in acute coronary syndrome, chronic stable angina and control groups were 5.7 ± 2.1, 6.2 ± 2.0 and 4.6 ± 1.9 mm (P < 0.001). There were no independent correlation between predicting factors and epicardial fat thickness (P > 0.05). This study indicated the thickness of epicardial fat to be more in cardiovascular diseases compared with normal persons. Future studies for evaluating the sensitivity and specificity of this diagnostic method are warranted.

Melanin, secreted hormone from the pituitary gland, has anti-oxidative activity and beneficial effects on sleep disorders, depression, cancer treatment and it is a cardioprotective hormone. In this study we investigated its effect on left ventricular function in patients with congestive heart failure. This study was a clinical trial among 60 patients with heart failure admitted to the training centers of Shahid Chamran and Noor hospitals of Isfahan, Iran. The studied patients were divided randomly on two groups: melatonin and control group. The patients in melatonin group received 3 mg melatonin daily and the control group received placebo for 2 months. The changes in functional class (FC) and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) were cpmpared between 2 groups. Data was analyzed by SPSS version 18.and Paired t-test, Student t-test, Repeated-measures ANOVA and χ2. In the control group 60% of patients were male and 40% were female and in melatonin group 77.3% were male and the others were female. Mean age in control group was 67.1 ± 11.8 years and in melatonin group was 63.5 ± 6.7 years (P = 0.24). The LVEF in the control group has no significant change before and after the intervention (P = 0.24). But a significant difference on LVEF was seen in the melatonin group (P < 0.001). If the further studies approve our results melatonin can be used in treatment of heart failure along with other drugs.

This stydy aimed to compare the blood safety according to viral makers of hepatitis B and C and AIDS, on the blood donors within the religious ceremonies and routine conditions.

In this retrospective research, 4808 blood samples of two groups of donors, routine donors and the religious ceremony donors, was evaluated for HBsAg, HIV Ab, and HCV Ab viral markers.

The HBs Ag prevalence in the religious ceremony donors significantly was less than the routine conditions, but there was no statistical different in HCV Ab prevalence. Also there was not any report of positive HIV antibody and there was no significant different between the two groups of donors in summation of HIV Ab, HCV Ab and HBs Ag markers.

The two groups of this study, routine conditions donors and religious ceremonic donors, had same conditions in safety of blood.