مجله دانشکده پزشکی اصفهان
پیاپی 771 (هفته سوم امرداد 1403)

Radiotherapy is a prevalent modality for treating cancer; however, certain cancers, such as melanoma, exhibit resistance to ionizing radiation. Cold plasma, an emerging technology in the field of medical science, is currently under scrutiny for its unique properties. The primary objective of this research was to compare the efficacy of radiotherapy and cold plasma as treatment modalities for melanoma and healthy fibroblast cell lines.

Melanoma cancer cells (DFW) and healthy fibroblasts (HFF) were exposed to radiotherapy doses of 1, 2, and 4 Gy, as well as cold plasma radiation for varying durations of 15, 30, 60, and 90 seconds. Subsequently, the outcomes of the MTT assay were compared. Furthermore, the level of apoptosis in each group was assessed utilizing flow cytometry.

While the survival percentage in melanoma cells treated with radiotherapy did not significantly change compared to the control group, even at high doses, it reached 36% in cells treated with cold plasma. The survival rate in healthy cells reached 70% in high radiation doses, while in the treatment with cold plasma, no significant difference was observed even in long plasma irradiation times.

The present study confirmed the anticancer and selectivity properties of cold plasma in treating melanoma cells. Compared with radiotherapy and cold plasma, cold plasma shows better performance than radiotherapy in melanoma cell treatment.

Fever, gastrointestinal symptoms, lethargy and weakness, headache, shortness of breath, and cough are usually clinical symptoms of COVID-19. This study aimedto investigate the effect of plasma cluster in improving the clinical symptoms of patients with COVID-19.

This study was a double-blind clinical trial that was conducted on patients with COVID-19at Imam Hassan (AS) Bojnurd Hospital. In the intervention group, the plasma clusters device was turned on continuously for 8 hours and then turned off. In the control group, the device was placed in the room, and the ionization part of the device was removed from the circuit. Patients were monitored for five days after the intervention in terms of improvement of clinical symptoms. Data analysis was done with T, χ2, and variance tests in repeated measures.

The results showed that fever on the first day and weakness and lethargy on the first and third days of the disease showed a significant decrease compared to the beginning. Other clinical symptoms of the patient did not show any significant difference in the two groups. Also, the clinical symptoms showed significant changes in the improvement of the symptoms of COVID-19 in the intervention group compared to the control group. However, there was no significant difference in body temperature between the two groups.

Therefore, along with routine treatments, the cold plasma device can be helpful as an auxiliary factor in improving patients' symptoms and treating them faster.

This article is an update on our previous review of clinical studies on the role of polypills in the secondary prevention of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). We also present the preliminary results of the Persian Polypill study.

Persian Polypill is a randomized clinical trial with two parallel arms on hospitalized patients due to acute myocardial infarction (AMI). It is planned that 1100 patients will be randomly assigned to one of the two arms of Polypill or usual care and will be followed up for 34 months. The primary outcome will be a composite clinical outcome of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), and the secondary outcome will be the cost-effectiveness of polypill treatment.

We identified ten completed studies and two ongoing trials in which at least 10% of participants had CVD. The evaluation of these studies showed the lack of research in low- and middle-income countries about the role of polypill in secondary prevention of CVD and limited information about cost-effectiveness resulting from clinical trials. In Persian Polypill, so far, 624 patients admitted to three hospitals due to AMI have been included in the study. The average age of patients is 60.9 ± 8.7 and 506 are male (81.1%). Overall, 94.4% of the patients underwent percutaneous coronary intervention in the hospital, and 26.3% had hospital complications.

The final results of this study can compensate for the gap in the past studies. They may confirm the role of polypill in the initial management of AMI and long-term secondary prevention in these patients.