Showing 52 results for Rafie
Seyyed Nematollah Seify, Ehsanollah Ghaznavi Rad, Ashraf Zamani, Mohammad Yosef Alikhani, Mohammad Rafiei, Soleyman Zand, Hamid Abtahi,
Volume 18, Issue 12 (3-2016)
Abstract
Background: Listeria monocytogenes is one of the most important causes of abortion and postpartum infection in newborns. Because of the importance of L . monocytogenes in the health of pregnant women and newborn babies, the aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of these bacteria in pregnant women and to compare the level of prevalence between women with a history of abortion and with no a history of abortion.
Materials and Methods: In this study, 540 samples of pregnant women were provided from Arak Taleghani hospital. The samples were cultured in enrichment media, then L .monocytogenesis was isolated in specific media.
Results: Of clinical samples, 14 cases had Listeria monocytogenes. Of these samples, 8 cases in women had a history of abortion, while women with no history of abortion were 6 Most cases of positive culture were related to the age of 25 to 34 years, including 7 cases, the lowest cases were 35 to 44 years old including 3 women and 4 women were between 17 and 24 years old.
Conclusion: The study showed that Listeria monocytogenes can cause infection in pregnant women. The use of Phenotypic methods and specific media can apparently isolate listeria monocytogenes from healthy pregnant women.
Bahman Salehi, Shirin Moradi, Somayeh Ebrahimi, Mohammad Rafiei,
Volume 19, Issue 4 (7-2016)
Abstract
Background: Boredom is a psychological phenomenon that was defined as an aversive state or incompatibility with every repetitive experience while the release of stability is not allowed. Boredom has several complications. So, the goal of this study is to compare the predictors of boredom in students of Arak University of medical sciences and Islamic Azad University.
Materials and Methods: The current descriptive-comparative study has been done on966 students (from Arak University of medical sciences and Islamic Azad University). The scale of current study was a checklist list of demographic information, predictors of boredom assess questionnaire, Farmer and Sundberg’boredom proneness scale. Data were analyzed by using chi-square, Pearson correlation, multivariate regression, and Fisher'sz.
Results: The greatest number of students from both universities have normal boredom without a statistically significant difference between male and female students (p=0.06). University factor had the highest average between students. Totally, boredom had a significant correlation with each of the home (p=0.000) and society (p=0.001) factors. All three factors including home (p=0.033), university (p=0.033) and society (p=0.031) can explain and predict boredom in male and female students.
Conclusion: The results showed that university factor was the most important factor for predicting boredom between college students. Thus, in order to avoid adverse effects of boredom on students educational activities, this phenomenon and its causes should be considered.
Reza Pakyari, Mohammad Rafiei, Somayeh Abolhasani,
Volume 19, Issue 6 (9-2016)
Abstract
Background: The failure time of permanent tooth is of the form of interval censored since the exact time of tooth decay is not available and it is only known that tooth decay occurs between two consecutive visits. There are a few techniques available in the literature for the problem of goodness-of-fit for interval censored data. In this paper, we propose a new goodness-of-fit testing procedure for interval censored data and employ this for the failure time of the first permanent molar tooth (sixth tooth) data.
Materials and Methods: Two methods of goodness-of-fit for interval censored data that are based on randomly generated data from each interval and averaging over the test statistics or over the p-values are employed for the failure time of the first permanent molar tooth data.
Results: The mean of the failure time of the first permanent molar tooth is found to be at 95 months. The p-values of the two goodness-of-fit testing procedures for the Weibull, log-normal and gamma models are calculated.
Conclusion: By comparing the p-values, the log-normal model is considered as the best model to describe the failure time of the first permanent molar tooth data.
Niloofar Moradi, Mehdi Paryan, Behzad Khansarinejad, Mohammad Rafiei, Mahdieh Mondanizadeh,
Volume 19, Issue 12 (3-2017)
Abstract
Abstract
Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the third major cause of cancer death worldwide. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and HBx gene play an important role in the development of HCC by influencing signaling pathways. Since there is no detectable symptom in the early phase of HCC, there is need to find new HCC-specific markers with high sensitivity for early detection and diagnosis of HCC. On the other hand, by the advent and development of bioinformatic sciences, it is now possible to predict miRNAs as biomarkers, and their targets. Therefore, in the present study, based on the results of the bioinformatic software applications with different algorithm, we selected the miRNA targeting HBx and NOTCH1 mRNAs according to higher score, suitable connection with target gene and confirming them in more softwares.
Materials and Methods: First, the sequences of NOTCH1 and HBx genes were retrieved from NCBI. Afterwards, several software applications such as TargetScan, mirWalk, miRBase, Miranda, PicTar, miRVir, and DIANA were applied to predict miRNAs.
Results: Based on the high scoring by bioinformatics softwares and suitable targeting, miR-34a were selected to target NOTCH1 and miR-6510, miR-5193 and miR-214 were chosen to targetHBX gene.
Conclusion: Because of tumor suppression roles of miR-214 and miR-34a, they probably could be used as therapeutic strategy in cancer researches. It is also seems that the miR-5193 could act as a specific marker in Hepatocellular carcinoma.
Seyyed Payam Shariatpanahi, Danial Habibi, Mohammad Rafiei, Yazdan Ghandi, Mehdi Anvari,
Volume 20, Issue 12 (3-2018)
Abstract
Abstract
Background: Today, the high prevalence of diabetes and its complications are one of the most important public health issues worldwide. For this reason, finding relations between diabetes risk factors is very effective in preventing and reducing complications. For discovering these relations, the data mining methods can be used. By extracting association rules, which is one of the data mining techniques, we can discover the relations between a large numbers of variables in a disease.
Materials and Methods: The population of this study was 1046 patients with type 2 diabetes, whose data had recorded between 2011 and 2014 at the Special Clinic for Diabetes in Tehran's Imam Khomeini Hospital. After pre-processing step with SPSS19 software, 573 people entered the analysis phase. The FP-Growth algorithm was applied to the data set to discover the relations between heart attack and other risk factors using Rapid miner5 software. Relations, after extraction, were given to the doctor to confirm clinical validation.
Results: The obtained results of studying these 573 people (Including 292 (51%) women and 281 (49%) men, with age range 27 to 82 years) showed that the lack of blood pressure, creatinine and diastolic blood pressure at its normal level, despite higher systolic blood pressure level than normal, doesn't increase the probability of heart attack.
Conclusion: Using association rules is a good way of identifying relations between the risk factors of a disease. Also, it can provide new hypotheses to do epidemiological studies for researchers.
Danial Habibi, Mohammad Rafiei,
Volume 21, Issue 6 (12-2018)
Abstract
Background and Aim: Interval censored data occur in repeated data in medical studies. There are common methods to analysis this type of data. The purpose of this study is to examine the random imputation technique in the analysis of interval censored data.
Materials and Methods: Using the Monte Carlo simulation technique, we evaluate the power of Random Imputation method, and finally we assess its performance using the actual data set. Actual dataset is related to dental information in Urmia, which contains 207 children. All calculations are done using R 3.2.3 software.
Findings: The simulation results show that the power of random imputation technique is good and acceptable. The p-value in real data shows that there is no difference using the random imputation technique.
Conclusion: Random imputation technique can be used as an alternative method in comparison with other conventional methods.
Mohammad Amin Edalatmanesh, Habibollah Khodabandeh, Nooshin Yazdani, Samaneh Rafiei,
Volume 21, Issue 6 (12-2018)
Abstract
Background and Aim: Neuropathy is the most common abnormality in diabetes mellitus which characterized with cerebral damages especially in hippocampus. This study evaluates the effect of Cinnamomum Zeylanicum extract (CZE) on memory, hippocampal neuron damage and antioxidant enzymes levels in animal model of diabetes.
Materials and Methods: 50 adult Sprague dawley rats were randomly divided into 5 groups: Control, STZ (Streptozotocin, 50 mg/kg; i.p.), and STZ + CZE100, STZ + CZE200 and STZ + CZE400 which were treated with CZE in 100, 200 and 400 mg/kg, respectively. CZE was administered in 14 days, orally. After evaluation of working and spatial memory, activity of catalase (CAT) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) enzymes was assessed by ELISA. Then, histopathological assessment of hippocampus was done.
Findings: In comparison with the controls, STZ group showed an increase in latency time and distance to the hidden platform in MWM, a decrease in alteration behaviors, cell density and activity of CAT and GPx enzymes in hippocampus (p˂0.05). In addition, treatment with CZE decreased latency time and distance in MWM and increased alteration behavior, hippocampal cell density and activity of antioxidant enzymes in comparison with the STZ group (p˂0.05).
Conclusion: Diabetes with reduction of neuronal density and activity of antioxidant enzymes in the hippocampus causes deficits in spatial and working memory. However, Administration of CZE ameliorates these neuropathologic disorders.
Fatemeh Amiri, Mohammad Rafiei, Rasoul Najafi,
Volume 22, Issue 3 (8-2019)
Abstract
Background and Aim: Reducing the fertility rates in Iran and use of multiple contraceptive methods in recent decades have been affected by many social, economic and demographic factors. Therefore, this study was conducted to study the fertility pattern and common preventive fertility methods at Arak city in 2017 year.
Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 384 married women referred to Arak remedial centers in 2017 year. The participants were randomly selected from Vali Asr, Taleghani and Amir Kabir hospitals. The participants information was collected using questionnaire and subsequently analyzed using Stata software version 12.
Ethical Considerations: This study with research ethics code IR.ARAKMU.REC.1396.4 has been approved by research ethics committee at Arak University of Medical Sciences.
Findings: Our results showed that the mean age and average duration of marriage of women were 40.03 ± 11.19 and 21.08 ± 12.73 respectively, as well, 281 (73.2%) of women used the natural fertility prevention methods. Most of the participated women were post-graduate diploma with lacked income and housekeeping. Other contraceptive methods such as pills, condoms, IUDs, one-month menses and three-month injections were 8.9, 3.28, 6.38, 1.7 and 2.6, respectively.
Conclusion: The most common method for preventing fertility is natural method. Condoms and pills are used more than the other contraceptive methods. There is a lack of awareness of modern contraceptive methods. Therefore, it is recommended that married women be educated about educational materials and counseling for familiarizing them with contraceptives. |
Morteza Gharibi, Simin Najafgholian, Fatemeh Rafiee, Ali Nazemi, Esmaeil Mansourizadeh,
Volume 22, Issue 5 (11-2019)
Abstract
Background and Aim American College Of Emergency Medicine (ACEM) guideline has a recommendation for early diagnosis of head injuries following mild trauma. In this study we examined the prediction power, sensitivity, and specificity of this clinical guideline in the need for computed tomography (CT) scan
Methods & Materials This cross-sectional study was performed for 6 months on patients over 18 years old referred to the emergency department of Vali-e-Asr Hospital in Arak who met ACEM criteria for head CT scan for suspected mild trauma. Demographic characteristics, clinical symptoms, trauma mechanism, physical injuries caused by head trauma, and history of drug abuse were recorded. The consciousness level (Glasgow Coma Scale) was checked every two hours. Patients underwent treatment if there was a pathology in CT images, and those with no clear pathology were discharged after 6 hours and, followed up by phone for two weeks, and in case of any abnormality in the level of consciousness, they were re-examined by CT scanning.
Ethical Considerations This study has an ethical approval obtained from Arak University of Medical sciences (code: IR.ARAKMU.REC.1396.227).
Results 500 patients, 335 male (67%) and 165 females (33%) with the mean age of 46.39± 2.01 years were studied; the sensitivity the ACEM guideline for predicting the need for CT scan in patients with mild head trauma were 100% with a specificity of 3.46% (for the second recommendation, the sensitivity was 100% with a specificity of 6.7%) which indicated that the test was highly sensitive to diagnosing the patients, but its specificity was low.
Conclusion The ACEM guideline had high sensitivity to predicting the need for CT in patients with mild head trauma, but had very low specificity which makes it an unacceptable criterion for rejecting or performing CT scan in these patients.
Leila Dehghan, Hamid Dalvand, Sadegh Samadi, Mohsen Ebrahimi Monfared, Fatemeh Rafiei,
Volume 23, Issue 4 (October & November 2020)
Abstract
Background and Aim: Musculoskeletal disorders are mainly prevalent among college students who experience direct contact with patients. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal pains among Rehabilitation, Dentistry, and Nursing students at Arak University of Medical Sciences in 2017-2018.
Methods & Materials: In this cross-sectional descriptive study, 538 students of Arak University of Medical Sciences were recruited using the convenience sampling approach. Variables included age, sex, body mass index, study field, hours of using smartphone per day, and nine symptom sites being neck, shoulders, upper back, elbows, low back, wrist/hands, hips/thighs, knees, and ankles/feet. The researchers assessed the musculoskeletal pain by using the Nordic questionnaire and demographic questionnaire. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS V. 18.
Ethical Considerations: The Research Ethics Committee of Arak University of Medical Sciences approved this study (Code: IR.ARAKMU.REC.1397.253).
Results: In this study, 538 students (205 males and 333 females) were studied with Mean±SD age of 22.04±2.53 years old. The results showed that the prevalence of musculoskeletal pain in the spine (neck 29.4%, upper 24.3%, and lower back 37.2%) was higher than in upper and lower extremities. Musculoskeletal pain in the shoulder, upper, lower back, and thigh were significantly different based on sex. Also, musculoskeletal pain in the neck and ankle, and foot were significantly different based on age (P<0.05). There was a significant difference between musculoskeletal pain of back and ankle based on smartphone use hours per day.
Conclusion: This study suggested that rehabilitation, nursing, and dentistry students are at risk for musculoskeletal pain, especially in the lumbar, cervical, and upper back.
Hossein Hemmati, Jalal Aboutalebi, Mohaya Farzin, Ghazaleh Hemmati, Elahe Rafiei,
Volume 23, Issue 4 (October & November 2020)
Abstract
Background and Aim This study aimed to investigate the demographic and clinical information of patients undergoing surgery with ultrasound in internal jugular vein cannulation.
Methods & Materials After the approval of the plan in the ethics committee of Guilan University of Medical Sciences, this study was performed in the general surgery department of Razi Hospital in 2018 on 100 patients in need of central venous catheter implantation. The neck type (distance between the two designated areas) was entered in a special form made by the researcher and after the completion of the design, it was examined and statistically analyzed.
Ethical Considerations This research ethically approved by the Ethics Committee of Guilan University of Medical Sciences (Code: IR.GUMS.REC.1396.20)
Results The mean age of the studied patients was 58.72±16.09 years. The anatomical and sonographic margins between the two Land Mark areas were higher in men VS women, but there was no statistically significant difference (P>0.05). However, there was no statistically significant difference between the other variables. (P>0.05).
Conclusion The findings of this study show that catheterization of the internal jugular vein under the guidance of ultrasound was less access time and fewer complications.
Afsaneh Talaei, Fatemeh Rafiei, Glonaz Motamedi, Ali Chehrei,
Volume 28, Issue 2 (4-2025)
Abstract
Introduction: Thyroid nodules are highly prevalent. The role of insulin resistance in thyroid nodule formation has recently gained attention. While several studies have explored the relationship between metformin and insulin resistance, limited research has assessed the effect of metformin therapy on thyroid nodule volume and number. This study investigated the effect of metformin on the size and number of thyroid nodules.
Methods: A total of 240 euthyroid women with thyroid nodules were divided into four groups. Group 1 received levothyroxine 100 μg/day, Group 2 received metformin 500 mg twice daily, Group 3 received a combination of both drugs for three months, and Group 4 served as the control group with no treatment. Thyroid ultrasound was performed at baseline and after three months. Statistical analyses included the Kruskall–Wallis, Wilcoxon, and Chi-square tests, examined the differences of the size of thyroid nodules and the mean of thyroid hormones levels between groups, for Each group included 60 people and to compare the percentage of differences between the groups, respectively. Also P value less than 0.05 was considered meaningful.
Results: Results showed no statistically significant differences in thyroid hormone levels after treatment among the three groups except the levothyroxine group. Additionally, only the levothyroxine group showed a significant post-treatment decrease in TSH and increase in T4. Thyroid nodule size significantly decreased in the levothyroxine group and the levothyroxine-metformin combination group compared to the metformin-alone and control groups.
Conclusions: This study indicates that metformin does not reduce the size of thyroid nodules, contradicting studies suggesting its potential antineoplastic effects on the thyroid. However, the study duration may be insufficient for definitive conclusions, necessitating further high-quality studies with larger sample sizes and longer follow-up periods.
