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Background and Objective: Divorce is one of the most prevalent causes of stress which results in emotional disturbances and behavioral problems in people. Women's vulnerability to divorce is more than men. The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral components training on emotional adjustment, resiliency and self-control strategies among divorced women. Materials and Methods: The present study was of semi-experimental design with pre-test, post-test, and control group. Among all divorced women referred to the Justice Advice Center of Babol in during 2017-2018, 60 were selected via convenience sampling method and randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. Data were collected via emotional cognitive strategies, resiliency scale and self-control questionnaire. At first, a pretest was given to each group. Then cognitive-behavioral training was performed on the experimental group during 12 90-minute sessions. Then, both groups took the post-test. Data analysis was performed using multivariate covariance analysis by SPSS software version 22. Results: The mean (SD) positive cognitive emotional regulation score increased from 52.4 (10.5) in post-test to 60.2 (13.7) in pre-test in the experimental group (P0.05). Conclusion: The study showed that cognitive-behavioral training lead to increased positive cognitive emotional regulation, resiliency and self-control and decreased negative cognitive-emotional regulation among divorced women. DOI: http://doi.org/10.22037/ch.v7i2.25857

Osteoporosis is the most common metabolic disease of the bones. Osteoporosis reduces bone density, predisposes a person to fractures, and imposes high costs on societies. Osteoporosis develops from a variety of causes, one of the most significant is vitamin D deficiency. This study investigates the impact of vitamin D on osteoporosis.

BACKGROUND: Avibacterium paragallinarum causes infectious coryza that is an important disease of chickens associated with an acute upper respiratory infection, growth retardation, marked drop in egg production, reduced hatchability, and increased number of culls. Infectious coryza has been reported from all around the world including Iran where chickens are raised. OBJECTIVES: This study was conducted to isolate Avibacterium paragallinarum from the suspected cases of infectious coryza in the backyard and commercial layer chickens in three provinces of Tehran, Alborz, and Qazvin in Iran, to characterize the isolates by molecular methods and to determine their antimicrobial susceptibility profile. METHODS: Swab samples from eye secretions and mouth cavity were provided from five commercial laying farms (25 samples) and backyard chickens (20 samples) suspected of infectious coryza in Tehran, Alborz, and Qazvin provinces of Iran. Standard bacteriological and biochemical procedures were performed for the isolation and identification of Av. paragallinarum. The antimicrobial susceptibility of the recovered isolates was determined by the agar disk diffusion method. HPG-2 PCR was used to confirm Av. paragallinarum using the specific primers of N1 and R1, resulting in a 500 bp amplicon. PCR-amplified hmtp210 gene with the amplicon size of 1.6 kb was subjected to sequencing with the standard Sanger sequencing method and phylogenetically analyzed. RESULTS: Three Av. paragallinarum isolates were obtained from all the cultured samples. Antimicrobial sensitivity test revealed that all three isolates were resistant to amoxicillin, oxytetracycline, streptomycin, ampicillin, and colistin while they were susceptible to cephalexin, ceftriaxone, florfenicol, gentamicin, linco-spectin, neomycin, and doxycycline. In phylogenetic analysis, two different genotypes of Av. paragallinarum were found. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, Av. paragallinarum isolates recovered from layer flocks were genotypically closely related to the strains from serovar C while the isolate recovered from backyard chickens was closely related to serovar B strains. Our results showed that the antimicrobial susceptibility is highly variable among the Av. paragallinarum isolates compared to previous studies. Future studies are required to develop better immunogenic strategies and eventually novel vaccine candidates to control the disease and reduce the risk of infection with multidrug resistant Av. paragallinarum isolates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Infectious bursal disease (IBD) is a highly contagious immunosuppressive disease of young chickens caused by infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV). IBDV consists of a two-segmented double-stranded RNA genome which can easily undergo genomic recombination or reassortment during mixed infections. OBJECTIVES: The objectives of this study were aimed to characterize a previously identified Iranian IBDV strain (JRMP29IR) in specific-pathogen-free (SPF) chickens, evaluate the presence of a mixed and/or reassortant virus population in this strain, and examine the frequency of genomic recombination and reassortment in publicly available IBDV genomes through bioinformatics study. METHODS: The SPF chickens were challenged with the JRMP29IR strain via oral and intraocular routes. Bursal tissues were extracted for histopathological evaluation and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) followed by Sanger sequencing. Putative recombinations and reassortments were evaluated using the Recombination Detection Program 5. RESULTS: Through genomic sequencing of the viruses from the bursas of infected chickens, the JRMP29IR strain was found which contained viruses from the classic, variant and very virulent IBDV genotypes. Through bioinformatics, numerous putative recombination and reassortment events were identified that naturally occur throughout the IBDV genome. CONCLUSIONS: Parental JRMP29IR appears to be derived from a flock undergoing a mixed IBDV infection. High frequency of recombination and reassortment among IBDVs suggests that these events are evolutionarily beneficial for the virus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influenza A viruses continue to circulate among wild birds and poultry worldwide, posing constant pandemic threats to humans. Effective control of emerging influenza viruses requires new broadly protective vaccines. Live attenuated influenza vaccines with truncations in nonstructural protein 1 (NS1) have shown broad protective efficacies in birds and mammals, which correlate with the ability to induce elevated interferon responses in the vaccinated hosts. Given the extreme diversity of influenza virus populations, we asked if we could improve an NS1-truncated live attenuated influenza vaccine developed for poultry (PC4) by selecting viral subpopulations with enhanced interferon-inducing capacities. Here, we deconstructed a de novo population of PC4 through plaque isolation, created a large library of clones, and assessed their interferon-inducing phenotypes. While most of the clones displayed the parental interferon-inducing phenotype in cell culture, few clones showed enhanced interferon-inducing phenotypes in cell culture and chickens. The enhanced interferon-inducing phenotypes were linked to either a deletion in NS1 (NS1-76-86) or a substitution in polymerase basic 2 protein (PB2-D309N). The NS1-76-86 deletion disrupted the putative eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4GI-binding domain and promoted the synthesis of biologically active interferons. The PB2-D309N substitution enhanced the early transcription of interferon mRNA, revealing a novel role for the 309D residue in suppression of interferon responses. We combined these mutations to engineer a novel vaccine candidate that induced additive amounts of interferons and stimulated protective immunity in chickens. Therefore, viral subpopulation screening approaches can guide the design of live vaccines with strong immunostimulatory properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Atherosclerosis is the main cause of mortality and morbidity in end stage renal diseases (ESRD), especially in hemodialysis (HD) patients. In addition the classic risk factors for atherosclerosis, non classical risk factors, such as high lipid peroxidation and low antioxidants, also, are culprit in the pathogenesis. Method We tested lipid peroxidation and total antioxidant levels in forty five stable hyperlipidemic HD males (age range 40–60 years) before, after 45 and 90 days of prescription of 20 mg/day Lovastatin for three months. Malondialdehyde (MDA), as prototype of lipid peroxidation, and total antioxidants (TA) were measured by flourimetric and spectrophotometric assays, respectively. Results Serum triglyceride (Tg) (213.7 ± 112.4 mg/dl vs. 153.4 ± 54.8 mg/dl p = 0.003), serum cholesterol (C) (185.8 ± 48.3 mg/dl vs. 149.3 ± 37.8 mg/dl, p = 0.014), LDL-C (120.1 mg/dl ± 48.9 vs. 84.8 ± 43.7 mg/d, p = 0.001), VLDL-C (40.7 ± 18.9 mg/dl vs. 30.7 ± 10.9 mg/dl, p = 0.025), MDA (13.1 ± 3.5 nmol/ml vs. 1.27 ± 1 nmol/ml, p = 0.00), TA (0.98 ± 0.17 mmol/l vs. 1.28 ± 0.27 mmol/l, p = 0.001) and HDL (24.9+11.1 mg/dl vs. 31.4 ± 7.7 mg/dl, p = 0.007) significantly were changed by 3 months of Lovastatin therapy. These changes for HDL, VLDL and Tg after the 3 months were more obvious than 45 days of Lovastatin therapy. Conclusion In HD patients serum lipids and their oxidations are increased. Both of them, quantitatively and qualitatively, are improved by using of Lovastatin. The later would be due to enhance of TA activity.