Archives of Advances in Biosciences

Introduction: The crisis management information system (CMIS) is a mission-critical system that enables the crisis management team for understanding, diagnosing, interpreting, analyzing, structuring, and making decisions faster by providing timely and high-quality information at the right time. The purpose of this research is to provide an architectural model of a CMIS for managing natural disasters in the process of finding trapped victims and relieving them.

Materials and Methods: This applied study was conducted in 2020 in two stages. First, data on CMIS used in selected countries were collected from electronic resources and digital libraries and were then analyzed. Next, a preliminary model of CMIS architecture including three aspects of informational content, applications, and technological requirements, was prepared using these systems and experts’ interviews. Finally, the architectural model of CMIS validated by the Delphi technique and the focus group.

Results: The analysis of experts in three rounds of Delphi test for three aspects of informational content, applications and technological requirements in the architectural model was performed with the presence of experts at the national level and the consensus rate over 75% was obtained for 7 modules and 28 proposed components of the CMIS.

Conclusion: The architecture of information systems has a direct impact on the performance of these systems. Using an appropriate architecture for CMIS can be an effective step towards reducing the costs and consequences of crises in Iran and countries with similar conditions and have a significant impact on saving human lives in emergency situations.

Introduction: Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is an uncommon cancer of lymphocytes, characterized by cancerous Reed-Sternberg cells in an inflammatory background. HL is an exceptionally curable disease with combination chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or combined modality treatment. This analysis aimed to identify significant prognostic factors on the cure rate.

Materials and Methods: The medical records of 110 patients hospitalized from 2007 up to 2014 with 18 months follow-up was retrospectively reviewed in Taleghani hospital of Tehran, Iran. The survival time was set as the time interval between diagnosis and a patient's death from HL. Also, if the cure rate was present in survival, data encompasses zero frailty. Thus, using hyper-Poisson (hP) distribution as discrete frailty, the unobserved heterogeneity and random effects were accounted for.

Results: The estimated cure fraction was 81.2%, which was obtained after 2717 days (7.4 years). In noncured cases, the mean survival time was 1535 days (4.2 years). Also, the five and ten-year survival rates were 0.91 and 0.80, respectively. After diagnosis, results revealed that patients with age  45, hemoglobin  12, WBC  15000, and BMI  30 were associated with poor outcome by using simple analysis. More importantly, there is no significant difference between males and females in the cure of HL patients.

Conclusion: As expected, the study indicated that a high proportion of HL patients got cured. A cure rate model with discrete frailty utilization provided a suitable way to account for heterogeneity among HL patients.

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third common type of cancer with rising prevalence worldwide. Despite the diagnoses and treatments developed over the past four decades, the survival rate of patients has improved somewhat, but still has a 5-year survival rate of less than 50%.  In this study hypermethylation of NDRG4 gene was evaluated as a biomarker in screening of CRC.

Method: A total of 70 individuals enrolled in this case-control study (45 CRC patients vs. 25 normal controls) and Methylation-Specific PCR was used to evaluate methylation status of NDRG4 in plasma samples.

Result: Mean age in the control group and CRC patients was 58.4±3.4 years and 64.6±4.4 years respectively. Male to female ratio in the control group and CRC patients was 1.5:1 and 1.1:1 respectively. Gastrointestinal disease history was positive in 12% and 33% of patients in the control group and CRC patients respectively. 53.3% of CRC patients showed hypermethylation in NDRG4 gene vs. only 23.3% of controls.

Conclusion: The results showed that NDRG4 can be a promising biomarker in screening and diagnosis of CRC as a noninvasive blood-based biomarker.

Introduction: Today, financing the treatment of cardiovascular diseases is one of the main problems of low-income and middle-income families. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of the payment system of diagnostic-related groups on the treatment costs of cardiovascular patients admitted to the selected hospitals in Tehran.

Materials and Methods: The present study was a descriptive-correlational study. The study population included cardiovascular patients admitted to specialized teaching hospitals in cardiovascular diseases affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences and Health Services (Tehran Heart Center), Shahid Beheshti (Shahid Rajaei Heart) and also 502 Army Heart Hospital and Tehran Bu Ali Hospital, affiliated to the Islamic Azad University of Medical Sciences. The cluster sampling method was used and samples were systematically selected within the clusters. 

Results: Implementation of payment system related to diagnosis is effective on the variables of number of days of hospitalization, drug costs and medical equipment, costs of nursing services and medical costs of cardiovascular patients hospitalized in selected hospitals in Tehran, with their relationship being at the level of p <0.001.

Conclusion: It seems that the implementation of the payment system related to the diagnosis could be used to reduce the cost of treatment and the number of days of hospitalization of cardiovascular patients admitted to selected hospitals.  Diagnostic-related groups system can significantly affect the financial health of hospitals and the availability of quality patient-care.

Introduction: Although there are a lot of interests in telecommunications tower approaches in view of Cancer, limited researches have studied the molecular pathways, which are enriched under ELF/EMF. The aim of this study is investigating the key proteins, affected by by Tower.

Materials and Methods: In this study, 30 Rats under wavelength electromagnetic waves (RF900 MHz) were randomly selected. Two-dimensional electrophorese was performed to study proteomics of Rat^’s brain.

Results: Totally, 26 differentially uttered proteins (DEPs) were categorized by cytoscape network analysis.

Conclusion: Some key proteins in view of cancer are regulated under the face of a non-standard (unconventional) radio frequency radiation, which can induce the complement and coagulation cascades pathway.

Introduction: Tuberculosis (TB) is an old problem that is currently considered as a great challenge, mostly in developing countries. It may be a lethal disease. Thus, rapid diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) infection plays a critical role in controlling the spread of TB, whereas conventional methods may take up to several weeks or longer to diagnose the infection. Hence, nested polymerase chain reaction (NCR) assay was applied for direct identification of the MTB DNA presence in sputum samples. The aim of the study was the development of a direct NCR method using mpt64 specific primers for rapid diagnosis of MTB infection.

Materials and Methods: To development of study, eight positive and negative sputum specimens obtained from Masih Daneshvari hospital pulmonary TB center, were studied. After smear preparation genomic DNA was extracted and mpt64 was amplified using NCR method. While doing work we paying attention to PCR standardization and precautions to avoid sample contamination.

Results: After evaluation gained appropriate results from purified genomic DNA by AGE and biophotometer, the standardized NCR products were evaluated by Agarose Gel Electrophoresis. Five of 7 positive samples were positive, and one of the negative samples was negative using our NCR assay. Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, we could be successful in the NCR technique’s optimization to our system for disese detection, while it can be apply as a more rapid, accurate, inexpensive, and specific diagnostic assay for direct detection of MTB DNA.

Introduction: In recent years, investigating the differences in Functional Connectivity (FC) network in different brain regions in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imagining (fMRI) has appealed to neurological researchers. Examining the functional connectivity differences between two groups can assist in improving neurological disorders cure. The present study explores the differences in functional connectivity between two groups, one using Modafinil and the other placebo, as to consider the impact of this medicine, concerning functional connectivity of regions of interests among young, healthy people.

Materials and Methods: Data was downloaded from website "Open fMRI." Downloaded data included 26 young, healthy men with no history of mental disease. They are divided into two groups of 13. The first group received 100 mgr Modafinil, and the second group 100mgr placebo. Three scans were taken from each group during the time. The data were analyzed through a longitudinal model, using a variance component.

Results: Exploring the functional connectivity difference between the two groups, using intervention and placebo in the baseline effect did not show a significant statistical difference, but investigating the functional connectivity difference between the two groups in longitudinal trends showed a significant statistical difference in Inter-Hemispheric and Right- Brainstem.

Conclusion: According to the present study's findings, Modafinil did not increase functional connectivity in most investigated regions.

Context: According to the wide range of patients with type 2 diabetes and their unique characteristics, the process of treatment should be personalized for them. The most important step towards treatment and care of them is preparing daily reports by patients in logbooks. Diabetes organizations and associations have provided various logbooks for diabetic patients, with different structures.

Evidence Acquisition: In this review study, articles and documents relating to type 2 diabetes logbooks were collected from relevant databases. From 60 articles, 28 titles including 23 articles related to type 2 diabetes and five logbooks from various diabetes organization were selected. The criterion for the selection was the validity of the organization offering the logbooks. Then, their data elements were compared.

Results: The findings showed that the data elements of blood glucose, physical activity, meal and medication are fundamental data to record in type 2 diabetes logbooks. However, different organizations have considered different data elements for their logbooks and the number of their data elements is different from each other. In addition, few logbooks included all data elements.

Conclusion: To achieve the best results from personalization of care in type 2 diabetes patients, it is necessary to record measurable self-care behaviors so that the process of the disease is completely controllable. Therefore, it is necessary for diabetes logbooks to have all these necessary elements so that the physician would make decisions based on sufficient data and the process of treatment would come in effective.