Journal of

Background: With due attention to the prevalence of thalassemia in Iran and patients' importunate needs for blood intake, this study aimed to inspect contaminations due to repeated blood transfusion which does not sift in blood donation. One such contamination is cytomegalovirus infection, which is an important pathogen in immunosuppressive patients or receivers of transplanted organs.

Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted on 311 thalassemia patients under age of 15 yr who was receiving blood from Hospitals in Tehran and Noorabad Mamasani repeatedly. To determine active infection (presence of IgM antibodies) of cytomegalovirus, ELISA method was used. In addi­tion, 225 healthy people under age of 15 yr were studied as testified group and finally all data were analyzed using SPSS ver. 11.5.

Results: 12.9 % of patients were positive from the view point of active infection. Regional separation of patients showed that the patients resided in Tehran are more contaminated to this virus than patients of other cities.

Conclusion: The range of cytomegalovirus active infection in thalassemia patients is high. One reason might be the infected blood intake or immunosuppressant (weakness of immune system) in patients, there­fore immunity care of these patients and negative serologic blood intake with respect to and also he­matic parents (parents with the same blood) are important.

Background and Aim: Sudden death in athletes commonly is due to unknown cardiovascular diseases. Therefore many protocols have designed for screening in the world. In the last years has been spent more attention to sport in elderly athletes and the number of their competitions have been increased. The aim of this study was evaluation of risk factor of cardiovascular diseases in Iranian elderly wrestlers.

Materials and Methods: All the members (60 athletes) of Iran team in Elderly Wrestling World Championship 2006 have taken census in the present study. At two sections the cardiovascular health state of them has evaluated: history taking and physical examination, electro­cardiography and exercise test. All date was analyzed by SPSS version 14 and mean and standard deviation for presenting findings.

Results: Sixty athletes aged 37 to 78 years (54.65±8.75) with history of exercise from 12 to 55 years (37.8±9.4) have been studied. In the history of 66.7% and in physical examination and history 75.1% athletes had at least one risk factor. Exercise test results of wrestlers were highly positive and positive in 8.6% and 5.2% respectively.

Conclusion: We suggest a perfect history taking and a complete physical examination for each athlete at the first step. If you found abnormalities then noninvasive diagnostic testes such as electrocardiography, exercise test and echocardiography will be useful and informative.

Background and Aim: Evaluation for STIs requires speculum examination. It is sometimes uncomfortable and rejected by many patients. Speculum examination often is impractical or not available in remote areas. Recently, it is possible to omit the speculum examination and noninvasively diagnose for Chlamydia and gonorrheal infections from urine sample. This comparison study was conducted by collected vaginal specimens directly without performing a speculum examination for the diagnosis of trichomonas infections.The aim of this study was comparison of two methods of vaginal discharge collection with and without speculum examination for diagnosis of the trichomonas infection.

Materials and Methods: We examined 100 patients with vaginal discharge to the gynecology clinic of the Taleghani hospital. Two vaginal swab were collected from vaginal discharge of patients before and during speculum examination for diagnosis of trichomoniasis. Both of vaginal specimens were tested with blinded microscopic. Compared collection methods sensitivities, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy of both methods was compared.

Results: Sensitivities, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy of speculum collection methods were 69%, 99%, 92% ,94% and 93% for trichomoniasis respectively. Sensitivities, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy of nonspeculum collection methods were 62.5%, 99%, 91%, 93% and 92% for trichomoniasis respectively. The differences between methods was not statistically significant (P= NS). There was a very good agreement between both methods for diagnosis of trichomoniasis (KAPPA= o.85).

Conclusions: We have demonstrated the benefit of  nonspeculum vaginal specimens for the diagnosis of trichomoniasis. This technique has applicability for studies involving the epidemiology of vaginal infection as well as for home diagnostic testing ,elder and pregnant women respectively.

Background and Aim: MicroRNAs (miRNA) are small noncoding RNA molecules that transcribed by RNA polymerase II. After biogenesis, these molecules act by incorporation into the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC). MiRNAs are involved in multiple physiological and pathological processes such as proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis and cancer.
Recently several studies reported down regulation of mir-150 during erythropoesis. Since hemoglobin expression is valuable indicator of erythroid differentiation we evaluated the mir-150 downregulation effect on alpha chain expression by Quantitative RT-PCR.

Materials and Methods: K562cells were grown in RPMI1640 in standard condition. K562 cells were transfected by microRNA 150 Inhibitor using transfection kit .Mir-150 downregulation was confirmed by miRNA Real time PCR, followed by Q-RT-PCR to investigate the alpha chain expression changes.

Results: By relative QRT-PCR the alpha chain expression was increased 10 folds in comparison to untransfected and scramble cells. Furthermore, the differences were statistically significant (P<0.05)

Conclusion: Elevation of alpha chain expression in our study showed that mir-150 downregulation has a crucial role in erythroid differentiation and can introduce as a novel marker in alpha thalassemia. Further researches to find out the detail mechanism and miRNAs genes target could improve our knowledge about miRNAs potential in management of diseases and their applications in gene therapy and regenerative medicine.

Background and Aim: Micro RNAs are a group of small non-coding RNAs which play an important role in multiple processes such as proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, and cancer. Recent studies indicate that mir-210 is overexpressed into erythroid linage during the differentiation of hematopoietic precursor. The main goal of the present study is to investigate the influence of mir-210 on the pattern of expression in hemoglobin gamma chain.

Materials and Methods: First, K562 cell line was cultured in RPMI1640 media. Then, pre-miR-210 was transferred into K562 cell line by lipofectamin. Finally, the alterations in the pattern of gamma chain expression were analyzed in days 7 and 14 by RT-PCR and real time PCR technique.

Results: It was demonstrated that the overexpression of mir-210 in K562 cell line would lead to a 25-fold increase in the expression of gamma chain in comparison with the control group. Data analysis revealed that the change in the pattern of hemoglobin gamma chain expression was meaningful (p<0.002).

Conclusion: Based on these data, overexpression of mir-210 can lead to a significant increase in the production of gamma chain. Therefore, more studies in the field may reveal the fact that an increase in mir-210 can be a suitable goal in the improvement of sickle cell anemia and β-thalassemia.

Background and Aim: Changes in political, economic, social, scientific and technological circumstances have a major impact on organizational performance. In such circumstances, the success of organizations depends on their ability to cope and adapt to changing environmental factors. This study investigated the relationship between organizational participation(team orientation, capability development and empowerment) and the organizational adaptability (change, customer orientation and organizational learning) in Imam Khomeini Hospital staff.

Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 114 staffs of Imam Khomeini hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences who were selected by random sampling. Data were collected by Denison questionnaire (2006 version), which was confirmed validity and reliability. Data were analyzed with spss17 and statistical methods like the mean, standard deviation and correlation coefficients.

Results: The results showed that the rate of the organizational involvement and adaptability of the staffs was 53.44% and 52.37% respectively. The Pearson correlation analysis showed a positive correlation coefficient (p<0.01, r=0.743) between two variables of organizational involvement and adaptability.

Conclusion: With increasing organizational involvement of the staffs increases their organizational adaptability

 Background and Aim: Understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in the increased levels of HbF inducing drugs should be advised for effective induction. The aim of this study was to investigate the molecular effects of the drugs thalidomide and sodium butyrate considered as HbF inducer agents.

 Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, CD133+ cord blood stem cells carrying mutations of heterozygous β-thalassemia were isolated and differentiated into erythroid lineage. In order to evaluate the expression of the erythroid markers, CD71 and CD235a, was analysed. For this purpose, the RNA extracted from erythroid precursors at days 6 and 12 of erythroid differentiation and cDNA synthesized, and then the expression of these genes was performed by quantitative Real-time PCR technique.

 Results: The results of this study showed the significant effect of thalidomide on erythroid proliferation as compared to sodium butyrate and control group (P<0.05). Also, thalidomide significantly increased CD71expression and decreased CD235a expression as compared to sodium butyrate and control groups (P<0.05).

 Conclusion : Thalidomide may play its role on HbF induction by increasing the proliferation of early erythroid precursors.

Background and Aim: Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a myeloprolifrative neoplasm that is characterized by an expansion of myeloid, erythroid cells and platelets in peripheral blood and myeloid hyperplasia in bone marrow. Secreted frizzled-related protein family is a negative regulator of the Wnt signaling pathway that suppresses this signaling pathway in healthy individuals. Aberrant regulation of the Wnt signaling pathway is a prevalent theme in cancer biology, and methylation in promoter of SFRP family has been shown to cause uncontrolled cell proliferation in cancer. Chronic myeloid leukemia was the first malignancy in which the important role of Wnt signaling pathway has been described. 
In the present study, we examined the methylation status of SFRP1 and SFRP2 genes in patients with CML.
Materials and Methods: Blood samples were obtained from 25 healthy individuals and 33 patients whit chronic meyloied leukemia (23 male, 10 female) Then Isolated DNA was treated with sodium bisulfite and analyzed by methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction (MSP) with primers specific for methylated and unmethylated promoter sequences of the SFRP1 & -2 genes. We used Mann-Whitney u-tests to investigate the correlation between SFRP-1 and SFRP-2 genes hypermethylation and clinical parameters.
Results: In CML patient hypermethyleation frequency of SFRP-1 and SFRP-2 genes were 16.1℅ and 27.2% respectively. In control group SFRP-1 and SFRP-2 genes were unmethylated.
Conclusion: The present study showed that, methylation of SFRP genes also occurs in CML like other solid tumors. Therefore, the methylation of these genes may play a role in the initiation of malignant disease.