Search

The current study aimed to investigate the effects of human placental mesenchymal stromal cell‐derived small extracellular vesicles (hPMSC‐sEVs) as a treatment for COVID‐19. This double‐blind, randomized, controlled clinical trial was conducted on two groups of patients with COVID‐19‐associated acute respiratory distress syndrome. After randomization, the control group received standard treatment and placebo, and the intervention arm received standard treatment plus hPMSC‐sEVs. The number of hospital deaths was considered the primary outcome. After meeting the exclusion and inclusion criteria, 21 and 24 patients were allocated to intervention and control arms, respectively. Besides admission SpO2 levels, which were significantly lower in the intervention arm (p = 0.008), all the baseline demo‐biographic and laboratory variables were similar between the groups. It was shown that hPMSC‐sEVs could significantly (p = 0.015) decrease the mortality ratio in the intervention group (4/21 [19.04%]) compared to the controls (13/24 [54.16%]). The mean time to death in the intervention and control groups was 28.06 and 11.10 days, respectively (p < 0.001). This study showed that hPMSC‐sEVs are a possible treatment for critically ill patients with COVID‐19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: In the recent years, image processing techniques are used as a tool to improve detection and diagnostic capabilities in the medical applications. Among these techniques, medical image enhancement algorithms play an essential role in the removal of the noise, which can be produced by medical instruments and during image transfer. Impulse noise is a major type of noise, which is produced by medical imaging systems, such as MRI, computed tomography (CT), and angiography instruments. An embeddable hardware module, which can denoise medical images before and during surgical operations, could be very helpful. In this paper, an accurate algorithm is proposed for real‐time removal of impulse noise in medical images. Our algorithm categorizes all image blocks into three types of edge, smooth, and disordered areas. A different reconstruction method is applied to each category of blocks for noise removal. The proposed method is tested on MR images. Simulation results show acceptable denoising accuracy for various levels of noise. Also, an field programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation of our denoising algorithm shows acceptable hardware resource utilization. Hence, the algorithm is suitable for embedding in medical hardware instruments such as radiosurgery devices. An accurate and real‐time algorithm to detect and remove impulse noises in MR images is proposed.Partitioning an image to blocks and adaptively reconstruct each block yield a better performance.Because of the low complexity of the proposed, its hardware implementation utilized limited resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polymorphism in the genes encoding CYP2C9 enzyme and VKORC1 reductase significantly influence warfarin dose requirement since patients with CYP2C9*2, CYP2C9*3 and VKORC1 mutant alleles require lower warfarin maintenance doses. Studies have reported the ethnic variations in the frequency of these genes within the various populations in Iran and other parts of the world. However, no such study has been done yet on Kurdish population in Kermanshah. From Kurdish population of Kermanshah province in Iran, a total of 110 patients who had heart surgery and taking warfarin, were genotyped for polymorphisms of VKORC1-1639 G>A, CYP2C9*2, and CYP2C9*3. Polymorphism genotyping was performed by sequencing as well as polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) using restriction enzymes of MspI, AVAII and KpnI, respectively. The frequencies of VKORC1-1639 GG, GA, and AA genotypes were 42%, 36%, and 22%, respectively and for CYP2C9 1*/1*, 1*/2*, 2*/2*, 1*/3*, 3*/3*, 2*/3* were 71%, 17%, 5.4%, 1.8%, 4.5%, and 0%, respectively. The frequency of VKORC1-1639A allele was 42.3% and the frequencies of CYP2C9*2 and *3 alleles were 14% and 5.4%, respectively. It was indicated that low warfarin dose requirements are strongly associated with the presence of CYP2C9 and VKORC1-1639 variant alleles. Our results confirmed the supply to understand the distribution of genomic biomarkers related to the drugs metabolism for future planning health programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]