Jundishapur Journal of Chronic Disease Care
Volume:8 Issue: 4, Oct 2019

Exercises and L-carnitine supplementation are effective for liver function.

The purpose of this study was to compare effect of circuit resistance training and l-carnitine supplementation on body Composition and Liver Function in men with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

In this semi-experimental study, 40 men with NAFLD were selected through purposive sampling and were randomly assigned to one of four groups includes: (1) resistance training, (2) supplement, (3) combined (exercise- supplement) and (4) control. Circuit resistance training was performed for 12 weeks, three sessions per week, with a training intensity of 40% - 80% maximum one-repetition. In the combined and supplementation group, 10 mg L-carnitine supplement per kg body weight was consumed daily with three main meals. To analyze the data, dependent t-test and one-way analysis of variance were used at P0.05.

After exercise, there was a significant decrease in body mass index and body fat percentage in the resistance training group and combined (exercise-supplement) group when compared to the control and supplementation groups. There was also a significant decrease in the level of aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) in the intervention groups including exercise, supplement, and combined (exercise-supplement) groups compared to the control group. The percentage of changes in AST and ALT was significantly higher in the combined group than in the training and supplement groups.

According to the findings of this study, circuit resistance and complementary L-carnitine training are effective for improving liver function. This improvement was more evident in the combination of training and L-carnitine supplementation, and these shifts are independent of changes in body composition.

Patients with stroke are dependent on their family to relieve their physical and emotional needs after discharge from the hospital. The family plays an important role in caring for them, which is a stressful task for the caregivers.

This study aimed at investigating the experiences of caregivers of patients with stroke.

This is a qualitative study (descriptive phenomenology), in which the participants included seven caregivers of stroke patients. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was performed based on Colaizzi.

The results in the study were summarized in three main categories: anxiety (tension and stress, concern about economic future), care consequences (fatigue, reduced family interactions), and neglected needs (psychological needs, educational needs).

According to the purpose of the study and its implications, it is concluded that nurses and physicians should pay more attention to the needs and concerns of patients and their caregivers and try to resolve them with regard to the consequences of the disease.

Hospitalization in intensive care units causes anxiety and hemodynamic changes in patients. Nowadays, citation therapy as one of the therapeutic methods in complementary medicine plays an important role in reducing the anxiety and stability of hemodynamic changes.

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of recommended recitals on blood pressure and pulse rate of patients admitted to the cardiac care unit (CCU).

This quasi-experimental study was performed on 60 patients admitted to the cardiac care unit in the two groups containing 30 controls and 30 test patients. At least 4 times a day and every time 100 times the mention of “There is no power but from God” and 7 times Hamad Surah was repeated. The average blood pressure and pulse rate in the two groups were recorded before and after the intervention by a digital barometric device attached to the patient. The data were analyzed by SPSS V. 16 software by independent t-test.

There was no significant difference in terms of blood pressure in the control group before and after the intervention (P = 0.25). But after the intervention, there was a significant difference (P = 0.006). There was no significant difference in the pulse rate before and after the intervention in the control and test groups (P = 0.023). Moreover, there was no significant difference between the two groups after the intervention (P = 0.55).

The results showed that spiritual care such as curative therapy as a non-pharmacological and non-invasive method plays a significant role in the improvement and stability of hemodynamic changes such as blood pressure and pulse rate. Therefore, these non-prescriptive methods can be used as complementary therapies.

In medicine, obesity is considered as one of the health-threatening factors in the world, which is referred to as the disease of the century. Manydiseases, includingpulmonary disease, are directly related to obesityandcause a significant percentage of annual mortality.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of selected exercise training on pulmonary function indices of inactive overweight and obese women.

This quasi-experimental study was performed on 26 obese and overweight women with the age range of 40 - 50 years and a BMI of 30.16  3.26 who met the inclusion criteria in the study. After purposeful selection and measurement of anthropometric indices and pulmonary function, subjects were randomly assigned to two equal groups of control (n = 13) and experimental (n = 13). During the sport exercise protocol, an intervention was performed for eight weeks, three sessions per week, and each session 50 to 60 minutes in the indoor courtyard. On the other hand, no intervention was performed on the control group. The data gathered were then analyzed. To perform the intergroup comparison, correlated t-test was used and to compare the intergroup comparison an independent sample t-test, at the significant level of P < 0.05, was used.

The results showed that owing to the sport exercise there was a significant reduction in the experimental group regarding body weight (P < 0.016), body mass index (P < 0.002), and waist to hip ratio (P < 0.001), while the subjects’ maximum oxygen consumption (Vo2max) significantly increased (P < 0.001). In addition, comparing the two groups of study, the results of the independent sample t-test revealed that TV (P = 0.001), FVC (P = 0.001), FEV1 (P = 0.041), FEV1/FVC (%) (P = 0.001), and FEF 25% - 75% (P = 0.001) in the experimental group showed a significant improvement compared to the control group.

Generally, it can be concluded that eight weeks of sport exercise program with weight loss has an effective role in improving the pulmonary indices in obese and overweight women; therefore, continuous physical activity can improve the performance of the pulmonary system.

Head and neck cancer is the most common malignancy in Sindh, Pakistan. The type of cancer can be observed in the oral cavity, lips, buccal mucosa, oropharynx, hypopharynx, nasopharynx, the floor of the mouth and hard palate in Sindh.

The present study was conducted at the Nuclear Medicine Oncology and Radiotherapy Institute Nawabshah (NORIN), Sindh, with the objective of reviewing descriptive epidemiological characteristics and incidence of head and neck cancer in this rural area.

In this study, we divided head and neck cancer patients according to their gender, age, districts, tumor location, probable causative agents, and stage of cancer when they had been admitted to the Radiotherapy Department of NORIN.

In total, 1,030 patients were registered during the study period from January 2012 to December 2016, comprising 56% males and 44% females. The most common site of the head and neck tumors was the oral cavity (58%), followed by the tongue, tonsil, floor of the mouth, gum, hard palate, soft palate, and lips. Other sites of head and neck cancer were hypo-pharynx, nasopharynx, salivary gland, parotid gland, oral-pharynx, and lyrnx. Most patients came in NORIN at stage III and stage IV of their disease and most of them were at the age of 40 - 85 years. Most patients were the residents of Nawabshah and neighboring districts.

Head and neck malignancy was the mostcommontype of cancer registered in NORIN in the last five years. Because of the lack of awareness, education, and diagnostic facilities, most patients start cancer treatment at later stages of the disease, which makes it very difficult to cure. Smoking and the use of alcohol, Gutka, Supari, Naswar, Man-Pori, etc., are the main causes of head and neck cancer.

This investigation aimed to clarify the period prevalence (PP) and incidence rate (Irs) related to cancers of the urinary system in Isfahan province, Iran.

Recorded data were obtained from the Isfahan Cancer Registry. The location of cancerswasdistinguished from the related established topography code (C64 - C68). Period prevalence (PP) and Irs was identified per 100000 persons.

There were 2117 patients with urinary system cancers. The mean age  SD was 63.6  14.9 years old, which in 62% ranged between 20 and 70 years. A value of 42.5 was calculated for PP that was associated with values of 66.4 for males and 17.9 for females (P < 0.001). The total PP corresponded to values of 33.2 for bladder, 8.1 for a kidney, 0.42 for renal pelvis, 0.36 for ureter and 0.38 for other unspecified related organs. Of these populations, the estimated living cases corresponded to 368 females and 1513 males.

The PP for urinary system cancers in male population was 3.7 times higher than females. There was a 23.2% increase in the Irs over the study period. These findings highlighted the advantage of a focus on the risk of urinary system diseases, its evidence based pharmacotherapy and surgical management of such patients. In this process, providing clinical drug-management has potential importance in Iran.

Asthma is the mostcommonchronic condition among children. It requires parents to engage in child care. Thus, the quality of asthma control depends on parents’ knowledge and attitude towards asthma and its treatments.

This study sought to evaluate the effects of family-centered education based on the Health Belief Model on knowledge and attitude among the parents of children with asthma.

This randomized controlled clinical trial was conducted on 64 parents of children with asthma who were purposefully recruited from a pulmonary clinic in Ahvaz, Iran. Participants were randomly allocated to either a control or an intervention group. Participants in the intervention group were offered a family-centered educational program based on the Health Belief Model, while participants in the control group received the same educational materials without the use of the Health Belief Model. Participants’ knowledge and attitude were measured before and three months after the intervention using a forty-item researcher-made questionnaire. The SPSS program (version 18.0) was employed for data analysis.

There were no significant differences between the groups regarding participants’ demographic characteristics and the pretest mean scores of knowledge, perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, and selfefficacy (P > 0.05). However, all posttest values of these mean scores in the intervention group were significantly different from the control group (P < 0.05).

Family-centered education based on the Health Belief Model is effective in significantly improving knowledge and attitude about asthma and its treatments among the parents of children with asthma.

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is an opportunistic pathogen that is able to cause different types of life-threatening infections from acute bacteremia to often chronic osteomyelitis, endocarditis, infections of indwelling devices and wound infections. These chronic infections are highly recalcitrant to antibiotic treatment. Owing to the increasing incidence of S. aureus infections and resistance with long-term treatment with available antibiotics, S. aureus is notorious. Research for new drugs, especially from natural sources is ongoing. Plants were commonly used in the treatment of diseases by a primary human from ancient times. Exhibiting minimum side effects, ease of use, availability, and commonly cost-effective are the advantages of plants. So in the last few decades, research on herbal medicine is getting popularized.

In this systematic review, we aimed to review antimicrobial potential of essential oil and different extracts (methanolic, ethanolic, ethyl acetate, ether or aqueous extracts) from 31 genera of medical plants, including 83 species against S. aureus and its most frequent resistant strain, methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) for introducing themas potent therapeutic agents. To find intended articles, we searched in several databases using a list of suitable keywords.

The essential oil of T. caucasicus has the best inhibitory effect on S. aureus. However, extract of 8 plant species has also the acceptable inhibitory effect. Surprisingly, essential oil of some plants showed better anti-staphylococcal effect than standard antibiotics. Moreover, twelve plant species have effective inhibitory effect against MRSA.

Some of the evaluated Iranian plants such as T. parthenium, T. vulgaris, T. eriocalyx, T. persicus, A. millefollum, P. harmala, H. scabrum, and S. urmiensis with acceptable MIC or inhibition zone have the potency of antimicrobial activity, especially against S. aureus and MRSA. According to the comparison, essential oil of Thymus caucasicus with the MIC value of 0.31 g/mL for S. aureus and 2.5 g/mL for MRSA has the best inhibitory effect. So the mentioned natural extract, especially essential oil of T. caucasicus can be a candidate for drug design with the goal of the treatment of S. aureus infections.

Central blood pressure is an important index in central hemodynamic stress andmaybe associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases.

This study evaluated the central blood pressure indices in coronary artery disease (CAD) subjects and their association with the number of diseased vessels involved in CAD.

A random sample of 300 Iranian subjects who underwent coronary angiography (mean age 58.08  10.62 years) was studied. Coronary lesionsweredefinedas luminal stenosis 50% andthenumberof diseased vesselsandthe central aortic pressure were taken. The probability of central blood pressure indices with the number of diseased vessels was also determined by using cutoff points, based on the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value.

The central blood pressure indices (fractional pulse pressure (FPP), systolic pressure (FSP), diastolic pressure (FDP) and FSP/FDP) were statistically significant in CAD patients with an increase in the number of diseased vessels (P < 0.001). There was a significant association between central blood pressure indices and CAD (P < 0.001) as well as with the increase in the number of diseased vessels (P < 0.001). Both odds ratio (11.84; 95% CI: 6.11 - 22.95; P < 0.001) and ROC analysis (AUC: 0.909; 95% CI: 0.870 - 0.939; P < 0.001) showed FSP as the strongest predictor of CAD. Furthermore, cut-off points of the FSP ( 1.373), FDP (0.811), FPP ( 0.559) and FSP/FDP ( 1.688) were determined for CAD for the first time based on 92% sensitivity, and 74% specificity.

FDP, FSP, and FSP, in particular, could be the effective predictors of CAD in Iranian populations. Therefore, the quality of life may be improved by the management of central blood pressure and using CAD cut-off points.