Archives of Advances in Biosciences

Recently, Abbasiyan et al. published an interesting paper entitled “Do the Editors-in-Chief of Iranian Medical Journals have a Good Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Plagiarism?”, addressing the ethical disputes occurred in last years in the Iranian research atmosphere [1]. In this study, authors nicely discussed the recent reports and flagged a critical suggestion for research decision-makers in Iran. Enjoo published a letter indicating on urgent need to have a new organization for having better situation [2]. Meantime, I think that newer policy help this idea before it can be widely referred. At first glance, there is an agreement that the current ethical administrative structure conducted by health ministry is basically well-structured. However, we expect this committee would possibly reduce the chance of the act of scientific misconducts. Though, I do not believe that current designed structure can be resulted in preventing the act of ethical misbehavior. From scientific point of view, it is long that everyone acknowledged that the scientific journals retract papers due to the various types of flaws include falsification, duplication, data manipulation and fabrication. The journal publishes a notice indicating a report of retraction, but it clearly sends a message that editors/reviewers (as a main scientific judge) are not efficiently involved in the review process [3, 4]. This is a neglected part of scientific publishing which always is far from the intense attention. Given new structure of ethical organization as termed ‘’ National Organization of Ethics in Research ‘’, training the editors and reviewers should be in the first priority. To now, researchers never got the credit or scores for their reviewing activities. Being ranked in the top list of the best accredited reviewers is a suggestion for science stakeholders to choose the best reviewers for national journals at least being a permanent member of editorial board. With this regard, Publons suggests the potential candidates to the senior editors in order to primary check the reviewers to be a member of editorial boards or blind reviewer process [5, 6]. The dark side of ethical issue is that we may not face with a real scientific researcher who commit such submissions or actually fraud! Indeed, it can raise another message that no specific education had been obliged for young researchers before they achieve the further promotions. Altogether, it can be concluded that asking independent advisors in design and develop this structure ‘’ National Organization of Ethics in Research ‘’ (NOER)is the most crucial step to have a new organization with scientific structure arranging and directing the such educations and ethical surveys for even senior professors in the national scale. Given the independency of NOER and independent advisors with proper background can help both ii) Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology to effectively prevent such bad news published in Nature and Science [7, 8].

Introduction:  The world prevalence of type 2 diabetes and its related increment mortality rate which needs high controls cost has attracted high scientific attention. Early detection of individuals who face this disease more than the others can prevent getting sick or at least reduce the disease consequences on public health. Regarding the costs and limitations of diagnostic tests, a statistical model is presented that helps predict the time of diabetes incidence and determines its risk factors. Furthermore, this model determines the significant predictor variables on response and considers them as model equation parameters.Materials and Methods: In this study, 803 pre-diabetic women in the age range of more than 20 years were selected from Tehran lipid and glucose study (TLGS) to examine the predictor variables on time of diabetes incidence. They were entered into the study in the phases 1 and 2 and were followed up to the phase 4. The predictor variables selection was performed using the Stepwise Model (SM) and the Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA). Then, the predictive discrimination was used to compare the results of both models. The Log-rank test was performed and the Kaplan-Meier Curve was plotted. The statistical analyses were performed using R software (version 3.1.3).Results: The Backward Stepwise Model (BSM), the Forward Stepwise Model (FSM) and the BMA have used 9, 10 and 6 variables, respectively. Although the BMA selected predictor variables number is much lower than the SM, the prediction ability remains nearly constant.Conclusions: The BMA has averaged on the supported models using dataset. This model has shown nearly constant accuracy despite the selection of lower predictor variables number in comparison to the SM.

Introduction: Crossover designs have applications in a wide range of sciences. The simplest and most common of such designs are the two-period, two-treatment (2×2) crossover. As a consequence, each subject provides a 4×1 vector of responses for data analysis in the following chronological order: baseline (period 1), post-baseline (period 1), baseline (period 2), and post-baseline (period 2).Methods: We considered three types of analytic approaches for handling the baselines:1) analysis of variance (ANOVA) method which ignores the first or both period baselines or use a change from baseline analysis 2) analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) method which uses an analysis of covariance where linear functions of one or both baselines are employed as either period-specific or period-invariant covariates 3) Joint modeling method that conducts joint modeling of a linear function of the baseline and post-baseline responses with certain mean constraints for the baseline responses. The crossover clinical trial data was analyzed, using the proposed models.          Results: Based on the results on real data among all mentioned models, the first model (direct comparison of post-treatment values) and the second model (post-treatment measurement subtracts corresponding baseline) had the lowest and the highest standard errors, respectively. With respect to Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), the fifth model (comparison of post-treatment values adjusted by all available baseline data) and the eighth model (comparison of post-treatment values adjusted by difference and sum of all available baseline data) had the lowest magnitude, and the ninth model (modeling period baseline jointly with post-treatment values) had the highest AIC for both variables which the values of AIC were 518.1, 520.9 and 1137.8, respectively.Conclusion: To sum up, it is found that baseline data of crossover trial may be used to improve the efficiency of treatment effect estimation when applied appropriately.

Introduction: The current study sought to investigate the impact of text modifications (lexically and grammatically modified) on reading comprehension ability of medical students with high and low levels of anxiety.

Materials and Methods: To pursue the purpose of this study, 150 male and female medical students from Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences participated in the study. The participants did not take a language proficiency test to ensure homogeneity, as pretesting might affect the internal and external validity of the study due to the interaction effect of pretesting [1]. The framework proposed by [2]. Moreover, a questionnaire developed by [3] entitled “Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS)” on a five-point Likert scale with 20 items served as an instrument. MANOVA was run to analyze the data.

 Results: The findings revealed that there was a significant difference between the reading comprehension ability of medical students with high and low levels of anxiety exposed to lexically modified (p<0.01), grammatically modified (p<0.01), lexically and grammatically modified (p<0.01), and unmodified passages (p<0.01).

Conclusion: It is hoped that the findings from this study will guide researchers into new directions so that they may go on to discover profound insights about text simplification for medical students in Iran and all over the world.

Introduction: Recent researchers have showed that regular exercise induces positive effects on cognitive functions. Exercise intensity and timing of cognitive assessment may have an interactive effect on cognitive changes. Previous researches suggest that moderate intensity treadmill running has the most consistent benefit to cognitive function. In contrast, studies find positive, negative, or null effects to cognitive function after high intensity treadmill running. The primary objective of the present study was to compare the cognitive effects of intensity treadmill running protocol 1 (Low intensity), protocol 2 (Moderate intensity) and protocol 1 plus 2 (High intensity).Materials and Methods: Male Wistar rats were divided into four groups (n=7 in each group) including: sedentary (Non-exercise), protocol 1, protocol 2, and combination of protocol 1 and 2. Step-through passive avoidance and elevated-plus maze apparatus have been used to test parameters of passive avoidance learning and anxiety-like behaviors.

Results: These findings showed that combination of both protocols (Protocol 1 with protocol 2) decreased step-through latency in the passive avoidance apparatus indicating memory impairment [P<0.05]. Moreover, the data revealed that different protocols for exercises did not alter %OAT [P<0.001], %OAE %OAT [P>0.05] and locomotor activity %OAT [P<0.05] compared to control group but not others.

Conclusion: High intensity exercise not only induced beneficial effect but also impaired memory formation.

Introduction:  Capsular polysaccharides of pneumococci are principle antigenic constituents of vaccines against pneumococci. Enhancing the yield of capsule production decreases costs of these vaccines and increases the vaccine coverage in developing countries. In this study therefore, we aim to optimize the capsule production from serotype 19F pneumococcus in terms of the applied pneumococcal strain and environmental culture conditions.Materials and Methods:  Thirteen serotype 19F Streptococcus pneumoniae strains were screened for the capsule production in modified Hoeprich culture medium using the stains all assay. The optimal ranges of environmental culture conditions for the selected strain were determined using single factor at a time (SFAT) strategy and utilized for the design of experiments based on the response surface methodology (RSM).Results:  S. pneumoniae 82218 showed the highest capsule production, and thus used for further studies. The maximum capsule production (1.364 mg/ml) was attained under optimal conditions (pH 7.26, 35.5 ºC, 30 rpm) predicted by the RSM derived quadratic model. The capsule production under the optimal conditions increased to 1.9 mg/ml using the buffered culture medium. Conclusion:  These results are much higher than those reported for pneumococcal capsule production in published studies [1, 2] and thus can be used to design suitable systems for the serotype 19F capsule production in the vaccine manufacturing process. 

Context: The healthcare in different countries faces challenges in enhancing the quality of services and reducing the costs. Information governance provides a tool for effective and efficient management of information, the use of which contributes to improved productivity, and effectiveness of services and reduced costs. Identifying the applications and benefits of using this tool paves the way for its accurate and effective deployment in a variety of healthcare organizations. This study was conducted to identify and classify the applications of information governance program within healthcare systems. Evidence Acquisition: The study reviewed English studies related to the information governance applications in healthcare published during 2000 and 2017. The publications were identified by searching the Pub Med, Google Scholar, ProQuest, Scopus and Science Direct databases. The key words included, but not restricted to, information governance, health information governance, information governance program and impacts of information governance in health care. Having completed the search, 128 studies were retrieved, of which 23 were reviewed. Results: The Information Governance program applications were categorized into five general groups, including improving healthcare and patient safety, reducing the costs, enhancing the quality of data and information healthcare, enhancing the security and confidentiality of patient information, improving the management of information and healthcare organizations.Conclusion: Through developing and implementing of Health Information Governance programs, updating information and upgrading information technologies, healthcare organizations could improve the quality of healthcare services and reduce the subsequent costs to achieve competitive advantages.

Introduction: One of the most common causes of encephalitis is due to viral infections, such as herpes simplex. Traditionally, brain biopsy was required for the diagnosis of HSV encephalitis; however, here CSF PCR detection for herpes simplex encephalitis is reported which was successfully treated with Acyclovir.Case presentation:A 52 year old female patient was brought to emergency department with fever (40⁰C), constipation, abdominal pain, fatigue, disorientation and agitation for the last two days. DNA extraction and Real Time PCR was performed on CSF sample for HSV-1/2 and HSV-1 was positive. Moreover, the brain MRI report showed left and basal temporal oppression, together with left and basal frontal pus. The patient was discharged after 20 days of hospitalization and treatment with acyclovir and normal physiological indexes and had a good clinical and neurologic outcome with resolution of all the symptoms.Conclusion:It is worthy to emphasize that despite the normal biochemical CSF, imaging results and PCR are proved evidence of HSV encephalitis.