Sharif Digital Repository

Crohn's disease and celiac disease belong to a group of autoimmune conditions that affect the digestive system, specifically the small intestine. They both attack the digestive tract and share many symptoms. Thus, the discovery of proper methods would be a major step toward differentiating celiac disease from Crohn's disease. The aim of this study was to search for the metabolic biomarkers to differentiate between these two diseases. Proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H NMR) was employed as the metabolic profiling method to look for serum metabolites that differentiate between celiac disease and Crohn's disease. Classification of celiac disease and Crohn's disease was done... 

The therapeutic effects of carotenoids as dietary supplements to control or even treat some specific diseases including diabetic retinopathy, cardiovascular diseases, bacterial infections, as well as breast, prostate, and skin cancer are discussed in this review and also thoughts on future research for their widespread use are emphasized. From the stability standpoint, carotenoids have low bioavailability and bioaccessibility owing to their poor water solubility, deterioration in the presence of environmental stresses such as oxygen, light, and high heat as well as rapid degradation during digestion. Nanoencapsulation technologies as wall or encapsulation materials have been increasingly... 

Catechins from fresh green tea leaves as potential sources of anticancer and antioxidant components were target materials in this work. Superheated water extraction, which is a kind of leaching operation, and solvent partition with chloroform and ethyl acetate were utilized to recover Catechins from tea leaves. Then, a mathematical model was developed to simulate the superheated water extraction of Catechins. The unsteady state mass balance of the solute in solid and superheated water phases led to two partial differential equations. The model was solved numerically using a linear equilibrium relationship. The model parameters were predicted applying existing experimental correlations. An... 

Bashagard district is one of the important malaria endemic areas in southern Iran. From this region a total of 16,199 indigenous cases have been reported in recent years. The aim of this study was to determine the situation of the disease and provide the risk map for the area. ArcGIS9.2 was used for mapping spatial distribution of malaria incidence. Hot spots were obtained using evidence-based weighting method for transmission risk. Environmental factors including temperature, relative humidity, altitude, slope and distance to rivers were combined by weighted multi criteria evaluation for mapping malaria hazard area at the district level. Similarly, risk map was developed by overlaying... 

Nanotechnology has begun to play a remarkable role in various fields of science and technology. In biomedical applications, nanoparticles have opened new horizons, especially for biosensing, targeted delivery of therapeutics, and so forth. Among drug delivery systems (DDSs), smart nanocarriers that respond to specific stimuli in their environment represent a growing field. Nanoplatforms that can be activated by an external application of light can be used for a wide variety of photoactivated therapies, especially light-triggered DDSs, relying on photoisomerization, photo-cross-linking/un-cross-linking, photoreduction, and so forth. In addition, light activation has potential in photodynamic... 

This study aimed to identify the influence of workplace cyber ostracism on employee online work engagement and employee mental well-being with the mediating roles of remote work challenges such as loneliness, procrastination, work-home interference, and ineffective communication. As amidst lockdown due to COVID-19, the data was collected from 303 respondents through an online questionnaire that was distributed in virtual groups among friends, relatives, and other fellows who were working in the private sector organizations of Pakistan. The hypotheses were tested using the partial least square structural equation modeling PLS-SEM technique. The findings of this study showed that workplace... 

Due to their ultra-small size, nanoparticles (NPs) have distinct properties compared with the bulk form of the same materials. These properties are rapidly revolutionizing many areas of medicine and technology. NPs are recognized as promising and powerful tools to fight against the human brain diseases such as multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer's disease. In this review, after an introductory part on the nature of protein fibrillation and the existing approaches for its investigations, the effects of NPs on the fibrillation process have been considered. More specifically, the role of biophysicochemical properties of NPs, which define their affinity for protein monomers, unfolded monomers,... 

Background: Balance training improves postural control in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, a systematic approach for the development of individualized, optimal training programs is still lacking, as the learning dynamics of the postural control in PD, over a training program, are poorly understood. Objectives: We investigated the learning dynamics of the postural control in PD, during a balance-training program, in terms of the clinical, posturographic, and novel model-based measures. Methods: Twenty patients with PD participated in a balance-training program, 3 days a week, for 6 weeks. Clinical tests assessed functional balance and mobility pre-training, mid-training, and post-training.... 

In recent years miscellaneous smart micro/nanosystems that respond to various exogenous/endogenous stimuli including temperature, magnetic/electric field, mechanical force, ultrasound/light irradiation, redox potentials, and biomolecule concentration have been developed for targeted delivery and release of encapsulated therapeutic agents such as drugs, genes, proteins, and metal ions specifically at their required site of action. Owing to physiological differences between malignant and normal cells, or between tumors and normal tissues, pH-sensitive nanosystems represent promising smart delivery vehicles for transport and delivery of anticancer agents. Furthermore, pH-sensitive systems... 

In this study, we are proposing a novel nonlinear classification approach to discriminate between Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and a control group using T1-weighted and T2- weighted Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI's) of brain. Since T1-weighted images and T2-weighted images have inherent physical differences, obviously each of them has its own particular medical data and hence, we extracted some specific features from each. Then the variations of the relevant eigenvalues of the extracted features were tracked to pick up the most informative ones. The final features were assigned to two parallel systems to be nonlinearly categorized. Considering the fact that AD defects the white and gray regions... 

In this study, a stable observer-based feedback controller has been designed for treatment of hepatitis C infectious disease under interferon (IFN) therapy. In order to consider the memory behavior and uncertain nature of this biological system, an unknown dynamics fractional-order (FO) model has been utilized for describing the interactions between the healthy cells, infected cells, and hepatitis C virus (HCV). To cope with unknown dynamics, the fuzzy logic system (FLS) has been utilized. Limitation of the drug efficacy due to its negative side effects has been taken into account as an input saturation. In order to estimate the unknown states which are required for treatment, a full-order... 

In this paper, a nonlinear robust adaptive sliding mode control strategy is presented for the influenza epidemics in the presence of model uncertainties. The nonlinear epidemiological model of influenza with five state variables (the numbers of susceptible, exposed, infected, asymptomatic and recovered individuals) and two control inputs (vaccination and antiviral treatment) is considered. The objective of the proposed controller is decreasing the number of susceptible and infected humans to zero by tracking the desired scenarios. As a result of this decreasing, the number of exposed and asymptomatic individuals is also decreased and converged to the zero. Accordingly, it is shown that the... 

Coronary artery disease (CAD) causes oscillations in peripheral arteries. Oscillations of the walls of the brachial arteries of 51 patients were recorded [together with the electrocardiogram (ECG)] by an accelerometer at different cuff pressures. By analyzing the energy of the oscillations in the 30-250 Hz band, 16 of 22 patients with CAD and 26 of 29 non-CAD subjects were classified correctly, independent of the ECG, and with no effect of heart murmurs  

In recent years, the role of optically sensitive nanomaterials has become powerful moieties in therapeutic techniques and has become particularly emphasized. Currently, by the extraordinary development of nanomaterials in different fields of medicine, they have found new applications. Phototherapy modalities, such as photothermal therapy (PTT) by toxic heat generation and photodynamic therapy (PDT) by reactive oxygen species, are known as promising phototherapeutic techniques, which can overcome the limitations of conventional protocols. Moreover, nanomaterial-based PDT and PTT match the simultaneous immune therapy and increase the immune system stimulation resulting from the denaturation of... 

Research question: Would there be differences in muscle activation between healthy subjects’ (HS) dominant leg and transfemoral amputees’ (TFA) intact-leg/contralateral-limb (IL) during normal transient-state walking speed? Methods: The muscle activation patterns are obtained by calculating the linear envelope of the EMG signals for each group. The activation patterns/temporal changes are compared between-population using statistical parametric mapping (SPM). Results: Individual muscle activity showed significant differences in all muscles except vastus lateralis (VL), semitendinosus (SEM) and tensor fascia latae (TFL) activities. Significance: The information could be used by the therapists... 

Image fusion means to integrate information from one image to another image. Medical images according to the nature of the images are divided into structural (such as CT and MRI) and functional (such as SPECT, PET). This article fused MRI and PET images and the purpose is adding structural information from MRI to functional information of PET images. The images decomposed with Nonsubsampled Contourlet Transform and then two images were fused with applying fusion rules. The coefficients of the low frequency band are combined by a maximal energy rule and coefficients of the high frequency bands are combined by a maximal variance rule. Finally, visual and quantitative criteria were used to... 

Obstruction of left anterior descending artery (LAD) due to the thrombosis or atherosclerotic plaques is the leading cause of death worldwide. Targeted delivery of drugs through micro- and nanoparticles is a very promising approach for developing new strategies in clot-busting or treating restenosis. In this work, we modelled the blood flow characteristics in a patient-specific reconstructed LAD artery by the fluid–solid interaction method and based on physiological boundary conditions. Next, we provided a Lagrangian description of micro- and nanoparticles dynamics in the blood flow considering their Brownian motion and the particle–particle interactions. Our results state that the number of... 

Obstruction of left anterior descending artery (LAD) due to the thrombosis or atherosclerotic plaques is the leading cause of death worldwide. Targeted delivery of drugs through micro- and nanoparticles is a very promising approach for developing new strategies in clot-busting or treating restenosis. In this work, we modelled the blood flow characteristics in a patient-specific reconstructed LAD artery by the fluid–solid interaction method and based on physiological boundary conditions. Next, we provided a Lagrangian description of micro- and nanoparticles dynamics in the blood flow considering their Brownian motion and the particle–particle interactions. Our results state that the number of... 

Conformational diseases have been investigated extensively in recent years; as a result, a number of drug candidates have been introduced as amyloid inhibitors; however, no effective therapies have been put forward. RS-0406 with pyridazine as its core chemical structure has so far shown promising results in inhibiting amyloid formation. In the present work, using molecular dynamics, we undertook the investigation of RS-0406 interactions with U-shaped Aβ1−42 and Aβ1−40 pentamers, Aβ1−42 monomers, and double-horseshoe-like Aβ1−42. To set better parameters for the small molecule, experimental and computational log P values were obtained. In addition, an analogue of RS-0406 was also simulated... 

COVID-19, as the most significant epidemic of the century, infected 467 million people and took the lives of more than 6 million individuals as of March 19, 2022. Due to the rapid transmission of the disease and the lack of definitive treatment, countries have employed non-pharmaceutical interventions. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the smart travel ban policy, which has been implemented for non-commercial vehicles in the intercity highways of Iran since November 21, 2020. The other goal was to suggest efficient COVID-19 forecasting tools and to examine the association of intercity travel patterns and COVID-19 trends in Iran. To this end, weekly confirmed cases and...