International Journal of Medical Reviews
Volume:8 Issue: 4, Autumn 2021

The effectiveness of cervical cancer screening programs is an issue of concern in developing countries. It  is a goal of researchers to find another solution or screening method to solve this problem. The current study aimed to compare the cos teffectiveness of the colposcopy and HPV-Pap test approaches.  This cross-sectional study examined 1944 asymptomatic women aged 30-70 years who had undergone colposcopy from 2013-2015. The cost of finding each CIN2 case was obtained and compared with the cost of the HPV-Pap test finding.  A pathology of CIN2  or greater cases were reported in 43 cases (2.2%). The cost of finding each case by colposcopy was 2,456 USD and by PCR-Pap was 2,966 USD (P<0.0001). The cost of finding each CIN2 or greater case by HPV-Pap test was 1.32 times that of a colposcopy. Colposcopy in this setting was more cost-effective and should be considered in similar settings.

Nephrotic syndrome is a clinical manifestation of glomerular  disease characterized by severe or nephrotic-range proteinuria >3.5 g/24 hours. The treatment of nephrotic syndrome using corticosteroid especially prednisone, belongs to a class of glucocorticoid. Glucocorticoids are proven  to be  able to inhibit growth through several mechanisms.  The objective of this study  was  to  analyze  the  characteristic  of  height  in  childhood  nephrotic syndrome  and  analyze  the  correlation  between corticosteroid therapy and height in childhood nephrotic syndrome.

 This systematic review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA)  guideline.  The  literature  search  was  conducted  in  November  2020  in  four  databases:  PubMed,  Science  Direct, Scopus, and DOAJ. Quality assessment was carried out using a quality assessment tool for quantitative studies from EPHPP.

Six studies met the inclusion criteria for final analysis.  The mean final height z-scores were -0.66 ± 3.04. The height z-scores of Steroid-Dependent Nephrotic Syndrome (SDNS) (-0.33 ± 0.87) and Steroid-Resistant Nephrotic Syndrome (SRNS) (-0.97  ±  1.34)  patients  were  lower  than  Steroid-Sensitive  Nephrotic  Syndrome  (SSNS)  (-0.20  ±  3.14)  patients.  The height  zscores of nephrotic syndrome children were significantly lower than a normal population.  Five studies suggested that there is a correlation  between  corticosteroid  therapy  and  height  on  childhood  nephrotic syndrome  and  one  study  did  not  find  a correlation between them.

 According  to  findings,  there  is  a  negative  correlation  between  corticosteroid  therapy  and  height  in childhood nephrotic syndrome. Nephrotic syndrome children had significantly lower height z-scores than a normal population. The SDNS and  SRNS  patients  are  more  susceptible  to  have  a  lower  height  than  SNSS  patients  as  they  have  a  higher  cumulative corticosteroid dose.

The outbreak of the new Coronavirus in China in December 2019 (COVID-19) and subsequently in variousn countries around the world has raised concerns about the possibility of vertical transmission of the virus from mother to fetus. The present study aimed to review published literature in this regard.

In this narrative review, we searched for all articles published in various databases including PubMed, Scopus,  Embase, Science Direct, and Web of Science using MeSH-compliant keywords including COVID-19, Pregnancy, Vertical  transmission, self-care, Coronavirus 2019, SARS-CoV-2 and 2019-nCoV from December 2019 to March 18, 2020 and reviewed  them. All type of articles published in the field of COVID-19 and vertical transmission in pregnancy were included.

A review of 86 final articles published in this area revealed that COVID-19 can cause fetal distress, miscarriage,  respiratory distress and preterm delivery in pregnant women but does not infect newborns. There has been no report of vertica l transmission in pregnancy, and it has been found that clinical symptoms of COVID-19 in pregnant women are not different  from those of non-pregnant women.

Overall, due to the lack of appropriate data about the effect of COVID-19 on pregnancy, it is necessary to monitor suspected pregnant women before and after delivery. For confirmed cases, both the mother and the newborn child should be followed up comprehensively.

The Celiac Disease (CD) is an autoimmune enteropathy triggered by dietary gluten in genetically susceptible  individuals. CD is considered one of the gluten-related disorders characterized by a small bowel enteropathy occurring in genetically susceptible individuals while exposed to the gliadin protein found in wheat, barley, and rye.  This review has been conducted to create Jordanian  customized  recommendations  for  patient  status,  the  prevalence  of  CD  in  Jordan. This  review  has  been  conducted employing Google Scholar, Medline, and PubMed. On these websites, we searched for articles on any date using critical terms related  to  celiac  disease:  "celiac  disease",  "celiac",  "coeliac  disease",  "tissue  transglutaminase  antibody",  "anti -endomysium antibody", "endomysial antibody", "prevalence", and "Jordan." In total, five research papers were retrieved. The results indi cated that the total prevalence of CD is still unknown in Jordan due to the lack of research and the varying diagnosis methods.  The available data is limited in order to build a comprehensive view of CD prevalence in Jordan. Nevertheless, minimal studies were carried out on a CD patient's awareness and education, and no intervention studies were available on CD patients among the Jordanian society. Therefore, a crude population prevalence study is needed .

This review article presents a comparative analysis of the health systems of two diverse countries, Germany and China, which represent developed and developing countries. The essence of conducting this comparison is to give an insight into the functional systems of a developed country, Germany in this case, and to evaluate the performance of a developing country using the same indicators. It provides a detailed account of the building blocks of their health systems (health service delivery, health workforce, access to essential medicines, health systems financing, health information systems, leadership, and governance) and the effects of political and socio-economic climates on their effectiveness. A brief summary of the socio-political climate of each country was given before advancing into the current states of each health system. Additionally, it offers a set of comments highlighting comparative advantages and disadvantages, which may serve as important notes for health managers and policymakers. It concludes that reviewing the building blocks of various dimensions of health systems can be useful for policy development and the construction of an ideal health promotion based framework, but further research is needed to determine the effects of each individual building block on health system performance (especially when their integrity is tested as seen in the case of pandemics). Several existed published materials were reviewed and they served as a basis for the information provided in this narrative review article.

Virtual Reality (VR) technology is developing rapidly in the last decade. The availability of affordable VR devices increases the use of VR in many sectors. VR is used as a platform for learning, entertainment, and medical profession. In  the medical  profession,  VR  is  used  in  many  aspects,  ranging  from  medical  education,  training healthcare  providers,  medical intervention, and rehabilitation. This review aims to explore the potential application of VR in pain management .

 Manuscripts  were  searched  in  PubMed,  Cochrane  Library,  and  PubMed  Central.  The  search  results underwent deduplication process. The remaining articles  were screened based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria  by reading titles and abstracts as the primary filter. The article that met the criteria underwent full read as a secondary filter.

 A total of 2401 articles were identified. Overall, six articles were included in this review. The application of VR is based on distracting  patient’s attention to reduce  the  perception of pain.  Four  articles showed  advantage of VR in pain management. Two articles showed no difference between VR-based pain management and the control group.

 The  emergence  of  affordable  VR  devices  boosts  the  utilization  of  VR-based  technology  in  pain management. However, their use still requires larger data and verification.

Spirulina (Arthrospira) exerts a wide spectrum of pharmacological activities that are largely attributed to its phycobiliprotein content,  mainly  to  C-phycocyanin.  C-Phycocyanin  is  a  natural  blue  pigment  with  many commercial  applications  in  foods, cosmetics, and medicines.  In this study, the stimulatory effect of  C-phycocyanin on the immune system was investigated using blood tissue and Peripheral  Blood  Mononuclear  Cells  (PBMC)  and  the  measurement  of  inflammatory  cytokine,  interferon-gamma, which  has important effects on dedicated immune responses. For this purpose, extraction of PBMC blood cells from blood tissue The range of  purified  C-phycocyanin  extract  concentrations  with  drug  puritywas:  1  µg/ml,  10  µg/ml,  100  µg/ml,  250  µg/ml.  Then, the response of PBMC cells to C-phycocyanin at the protein level was investigated. Finally, interferon-gamma was measured using the culture supernatant and ELISA sandwich method.  Descriptive  analysis  of  the  read  concentrations  results  by  ELISA  technique  showed  that  C-phycocyanin  is dosedependent  and  the  results  of  the  effect  of  C-phycocyanin  on  PBMC  cells  in  blood  tissue  showed  the strengthening  of  the immune system by increasing the amount of inflammatory cytokines. According to the results of the analysis of variance, it isobserved that the p-value is less than 0.05. This means there is a significant difference between the mean read concentration of ELISA in different concentrations of cytokines. The results of the experiments demonstrate that C-phycocyanin activates PBMC cells in a manner that is consistent with the recruitment of diverse populations of leukocytes in response to inflammatory and infectious signals.