Tehran University Medical Journal

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Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Background: During recent three decades, parallel to the improvement of arthroscopic techniques, intra-articular block by direct injection of anesthetics into the joint has been used in knee arthroscopy. In this study the efficacy of intra- articular block by complex of bupivacaine, lidocaine and adrenaline in knee arthroscopy has been assessed.
Methods: Forty one healthy adults (age range: 18-55 years) with knee problems selected for diagnostic arthroscopy. Anesthesia was induced by direct injection of 10ml 2% bupivacaine, 10ml 0.5% lidocaine plus 1/100000 adrenaline into the knee joint.  Duration of operation and volume of serum used for irrigation during the procedure pain and analgesics requirement, during and after arthroscopy VAS (Visual Analogue Scale) score, at time of discharge from recovery and also patient's and surgeon's satisfaction were assessed.
Results: Sixty eight percent and 29% of cases reported mild and moderate degree of pain perception during arthroscopy, respectively, and only one case for which general anesthesia was performed, reported severe pain. VAS mean was 2.78. Seventy eight percent of cases and the surgeon in 80% of procedures had excellent or good satisfaction with intra-articular block.
Conclusions: Considering high level of satisfaction in both patients and surgeon and mean of VAS, complications of other modalities of anesthesisa and simplicity of the technique, intra-articular block can be used as an easy, safe and efficient method for knee arthroscopy.

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Background: Asthma as an airway disease is identified by increase network respon-siveness of the trachea and bronchus to a specific stimulus. Th17 cells through produc-tion of IL-17 have important role in inflammation and autoimmune diseases .In some studies has been shown which IL-17 as major cytokine of Th17 probably has im-portant role in the pathogenesis of allergy and asthma. Methods: Total mRNA extracted from whole blood samples and sputum of 23 asthma patients and 23 normal controls. Then, total RNA was converted into cDNA according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Finally, the transcript levels of IL-17 were quanti-fied by the real-time quantitative PCR. Twenty-three patients with asthma were diag-nosed and selected according to the global initiative for asthma (GINA) and none of the patients had taken the medication at least three week before sampling. Healthy in-dividuals did not have any history of allergy, asthma and other inflammatory diseases at the time of sampling. All of experiments have done in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Iran during May to February, 2013. Results: This study showed a significant increase in transcript levels of IL-17 in the blood (287±79 versus 1/18±0/13) and sputum samples of the patients (64±28 versus 0/9±0/1) in comparison with normal individuals (P= 0.000, P= 0.029 respectively). It al-so revealed that the expression levels of the cytokines in the serum samples of the asthmatics were significantly more than their levels in patient’s sputum samples (P= 0.000). However, there was no significant difference between the cytokines expression levels in serum samples and sputum samples of the controls (P> 0.05). Conclusion: In this study, we showed which the expression of IL-17 was increased in serum and sputum of asthmatic patients compared to healthy controls, this could re-sult in elevation of neutrophils population and activation of pulmonary neutrophil.

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Background: Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune rheumatic connective tissue disease. In normal wound healing process, fibroblasts are activated, proliferated and involved in tissue repair, and then removed by apoptosis. In systemic sclerosis, patient’s fibrosis occurs when fibroblasts become resistant to apoptosis and secrete a large amount of collagen and other extracellular matrixes. As the primary causes the disease are very complex and often unknown, it is necessary to consider or target the secondary causes of disease, such as the unresponsiveness of activated fibroblasts to apoptosis as the major factor in the creation and deployment of illness. In this study, we examined the expression levels of two key pro-apoptotic genes, Fas and Apaf-1, which are respectively involved in external and internal pathway of apoptosis.

Methods: In a case-control study skin biopsy samples were obtained from 19 patients with diffuse SSc, and 16 healthy controls. Dermal fibroblasts were cultured and total RNA was isolated from cell populations using High Pure RNA Isolation Kit (Roche Applied Science, Mannheim, Germany), followed by cDNA synthesis using RevertAid First Strand cDNA Synthesis Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Massachusetts, USA). Real-time PCR was performed using SYBRGreen gene expression master mix (Takara Shuzo, Co., Ltd, Shiga, Japan) and specific primers for Fas and Apaf-1. Real-time data were analyzed using the (2^-ΔCT)×1000 method. Statistical analysis was accomplished by using the SPSS software, v22 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA). The P value less than 0.05 were recognized as a significant threshold. All data are represented as the mean ± SEM.

Results: Our results showed no significant difference in Fas (P=0.8) and Apaf-1 (P=0.17) mRNA expression levels between skin fibroblasts of systemic sclerosis patients and healthy controls.

Conclusion: In this study we observed no significant change in Apaf-1 and Fas mRNA levels in systemic sclerosis fibroblasts compared to control group. Hence, Apaf-1 and Fas are not transcriptionally activated in SSc fibroblasts. Further studies need to take place on protein levels and function of these proteins to confirm the mRNA transcription results.

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Background: Systemic Sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune disease with multi-organ involvement mostly due to fibrosis and ectopic or excessive collagen fibers production in organs. Myocardial fibrosis is the main finding of cardiac involvement in patients with systemic sclerosis. In recent studies, the presence of Fragmented QRS complexes (FQRS) has been shown in the surface electrocardiogram in relation to fibrosis.
Methods: The present study is a case-control study during March 2019 to February 2020 that was conducted in 148 patients with scleroderma referred to the Rheumatology clinic in Shariati Hospital and 101 non-ischemic individuals in the control group matched by age and sex with the patient group. All the medical records were reviewed and those who were low risk according to 10-year atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk assessment were selected as case groups. Data of ECG were evaluated for availability of FQRS or conductive abnormalities and calculating PR, QRS, QT, QTc and Tp-e intervals.