Sharif Digital Repository

Background. Autoimmune process and immunosuppressive therapy of pemphigus vulgaris would predispose the patients to infections. Aim. We aimed to study the prevalence of infection and pathogenic agents in pemphigus vulgaris patients admitted to dermatology service. Material and methods. This retrospective study was conducted on 155 pemphigus vulgaris patients (68 males, 87 females) admitted to dermatology service between 2009 and 2011. In this study, the diagnosis of pemphigus vulgaris was confirmed by light microscopic and direct immunofluorescence findings. Data were collected through a questionnaire. Results. Of 155 pemphigus vulgaris patients, 33 had infection at admission and 9 acquired... 

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... 

This paper is concerned with global analysis of an SAIS epidemiological model in a population of varying size introduced by Busenberg and van den Driessche. In this model the population is divided into three subgroups of susceptible, asymptomatic and infective individuals. It has been shown that this system has no periodic solutions and all its trajectories tend to the equilibria of the system. We use the Poincaré Index theorem to determine the number of the equilibria and their stability properties. We have shown that bistability occurs for suitable values of parameters and found a set of examples of all possible dynamics of the system  

Surgical site infection (SSI) is one of the important infectious problems in hospitals. It is well known that appropriate ventilation strategy is most effective way to control bacteria-carrying airborne particles responsible for SSI. With considerable improvement in the computational capacity of computers, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique has been widely used to study the indoor airflow and contaminant dispersion over the enclosures. In this research, the effect of inlet air velocity on the ultra-clean ventilation system performance is investigated Eulerian-Lagrangian numerical approach. The results show that surgical wound contamination may be highly affected by inlet velocity.... 

This review covers the most recent developments of inorganic and organic-inorganic composite coatings for orthopedic implants, providing the interface with living tissue and with potential for drug delivery to combat infections. Conventional systemic delivery of drugs is an inefficient procedure that may cause toxicity and may require a patient's hospitalization for monitoring. Local delivery of antibiotics and other bioactive molecules maximizes their effect where they are required, reduces potential systemic toxicity and increases timeliness and cost efficiency. In addition, local delivery has broad applications in combating infection-related diseases. Polymeric coatings may present some... 

Clioquinol is an antifungal, antiprotozoal and an Alzheimer's disease drug with cytotoxic activity toward human cancer cells. The electrochemical behavior of clioquinol and its oxidation product was studied using cyclic, differential pulse and square-wave voltammetry over a wide pH range on a glassy carbon electrode. The results revealed that the oxidation of clioquinol is an irreversible pH-dependent process that proceeds with the transfer of one electron and one proton in an adsorption-controlled mechanism and results in the formation of a main oxidation product, which adsorbs very strongly on the glassy carbon surface. The charge transfer coefficient was calculated as 0.64. The adsorbed... 

Recent strategies to locally deliver antimicrobial agents to combat implant-associated infections—one of the most common complications in orthopedic surgery—are gaining interest. However, achieving a controlled release profile over a desired time frame remains a challenge. In this study, we present an innovative multifactorial approach to combat infections which comprises a multilayer chitosan/bioactive glass/vancomycin nanocomposite coating with an osteoblastic potential and a drug delivery capacity. The bioactive drug-eluting coating was prepared on the surface of titanium foils by a multistep electrophoretic deposition technique. The adopted deposition strategy allowed for a high... 

In this paper, a nonlinear adaptive control method is presented for the treatment of the Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) infection. Nonlinear dynamics of the HBV, modeling uncertainties and three state variables (the numbers of uninfected and infected cells and free viruses) are taken into account. The proposed control law is designed for the antiviral drug input such that the number of free viruses and consequently the number of infected cells decrease to the desired values. An adaptation law is also presented to overcome modeling uncertainties by updating estimations of the system parameters during the treatment period. The stability of the process and convergence to desired state values are... 

Background: Warts are the most common clinical manifestation of the human papilloma-virus infection in the skin and mucous membranes. In spite of the various therapeutic modalities for nongenital skin warts, there is still no single method to be used as an approved treatment. In this study, we compared the efficacy of immunotherapy and cryotherapy on wart lesions. Methods: Sixty patients with verruca vulgaris and plantar warts were randomly divided into two groups. One group received intralesional injection of candida antigen repeated every 3 weeks until complete improvement of all warts or for a maximum of three sessions. The second group was treated by cryotherapy with liquid nitrogen for... 

The successful treatment of bone infections is a major challenge in the field of orthopedics. There are some common methods for treating bone infections, including systemic antibiotic administration, local nondegradable drug vehicles, and surgical debridement, and each of these approaches has advantages and disadvantages. In the present study, the antibiotic vancomycin (VANCO) was loaded in silk fibroin nanoparticles (SFNPs) and the complexes were then entrapped in silk scaffolds to form sustained drug delivery systems. The release kinetics of VANCO from SFNPs alone and when the SFNPs were entrapped in silk scaffolds were assessed at two different pH values, 4.5 and 7.4, that affected the... 

Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between microRNAs and viral and immunological markers in HIV-1 infection. Materials & methods: The expression level of miRNAs was evaluated in 60 HIV-1 patients and 20 healthy controls using real-time PCR assays. Results: The results showed that among all miRNAs, miR-29 and miR-150 were significantly downregulated in HIV-1 patients compared with healthy controls, while miR-155 and miR-223 were significantly upregulated compared with healthy controls (p < 0.001 for all comparisons). Conclusion: The mentioned miRNAs seem to influence the clinical progression of HIV-1 infection in naive patients. Moreover, determining the profiles of... 

A composite coating containing silver, fluoride and hydroxyapatite (Ag-FHA) was developed on titanium substrate by sol-gel method. Triethylphosphite, hydrated calcium nitrate, ammonium fluoride and silver nitrate were used respectively, as P, Ca, F and Ag precursors with a Ca:P ratio 1.67 and concentration of silver was 0.3 wt%. Coatings were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS). Potentiodynamic polarization measurements in simulated body fluid proved corrosion protection caused by both Ag-FHA coatings. Antibacterial activity of coatings against... 

Since that pathogenic bacteria are major threats to human health, this paper describes the fabrication of an effective and durable sensing platform based on gold nanoparticles/carbon nanoparticles/cellulose nanofibers nanocomposite (AuNPs/CNPs/CNFs) at the surface of glassy carbon electrode for sensitive and selective detection of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus). The AuNPs/CNPs/CNFs nanocomposite with the high surface area, excellent conductivity, and good biocompatibility was used for self-assembled of the thiolated specific S. aureus aptamer as a sensing element. The surface morphology of AuNPs/CNPs/CNFs nanocomposite was characterized with field emission scanning electron microscopy... 

Based on previous studies, empirical distribution of the bacterial burst size varies even in a population of isogenic bacteria. Since bacteriophage progenies increase linearly with time, it is the lysis time variation that results in the bacterial burst size variations. Here, the burst size variation is computationally modeled by considering the lysis time decisions as a game. Each player in the game is a bacteriophage that has initially infected and lysed its host bacterium. Also, the payoff of each burst size strategy is the average number of bacteria that are solely infected by the bacteriophage progenies after lysis. For calculating the payoffs, a new version of ball and bin model with... 

According to the latest report from the World Health Organization, an estimated 265,000 deaths still occur every year as a direct result of burn injuries. A widespread range of these deaths induced by burn wound happens in low- and middle-income countries, where survivors face a lifetime of morbidity. Most of the deaths occur due to infections when a high percentage of the external regions of the body area is affected. Microbial nutrient availability, skin barrier disruption, and vascular supply destruction in burn injuries as well as systemic immunosuppression are important parameters that cause burns to be susceptible to infections. Topical antimicrobials and dressings are generally... 

Salicylic acid-beeswax microspheres were prepared by melt dispersion technique. The effects of formulation parameters on the microscopic characteristic, drug loading and cumulative amount of released drug were investigated by experimental design. Results showed that all of the microparticles were spherical with porous surfaces. The average size of microspheres was 2448 m, the drug content was in the range of 2245 and the encapsulation efficiency was 4693. Drug loading was influenced by emulsification speed as a main factor. All the microspheres had a burst release initially. The emulsifier concentration did not have a significant effect on drug release. The release behaviour of microspheres... 

Despite tremendous efforts toward vaccination, influenza remains an ongoing global threat. The induction of strain-specific neutralizing antibody responses is a common phenomenon during vaccination with the current inactivated influenza vaccines, so the protective effect of these vaccines is mostly strain-specific. There is an essential need for the development of next-generation vaccines, with a broad range of immunogenicity against antigenically drifted or shifted influenza viruses. Here, we evaluate the potential of whole inactivated vaccines, based on chemical and physical methods, as well as new approaches to generate cross-protective immune responses. We also consider the mechanisms by... 

Purpose: Endometriosis is a gynecological disease that causes the uterine lining to appear in other organs outside the uterus. As DNA methylation has an important role in this disorder, its profiling can reveal new information to improve the diagnosis and treatment of endometriosis patients. Methods: We conducted a genome-wide methylation profiling of ectopic and eutopic endometrial tissues from women with and without endometriosis using Infinium Human Methylation 450K BeadChip arrays. DNA methylation samples were collected from nine ectopic and nine eutopic endometrial tissues of endometriosis and six endometrial tissues of healthy controls. Results: Correlation heatmaps and the principal...