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Soil and water in Egypt have become contaminated with multiple pollutants. These contaminants arise from diverse sources, including misuse of fertilizers, industrial effluent discharged into irrigation water, discharge of wastewater in rural areas, and mining activities discharging wet and dry atmospheric deposits and heavy metal contamination. The pollutants can directly affect the quality of air, water, and food and have an adverse effect on human health. About 33% of the cultivated lands in Egypt are salinized due to extreme conditions like high temperatures and aridity. The presence of elevated salt levels in the soil leads to grave consequences for seed germination, plant biochemical processes, development, and reproduction, all of which result in the output of reactive oxygen species and eventually plant death. Despite the possibility of thermal, chemical, or a combination of the two to remediate contaminated soils, their applications are complicated and costly. Some plants, called hyperaccumulators, exhibit the potential to clean up pollutants safely from the soil and water at a low cost. All the technologies used in soil decontamination are called phytoremediation. Some physiological (e.g., phytoextraction, phytostabilization, phytotransformation, rhizofiltration, phytostimulation, phytovolatilization, phytodegradation, and phytodesalination) and molecular parameters (e.g., genes, peptides, and proteins) are involved in heavy metals accumulation of these plants. Although trees are not classified as hyperaccumulators, they have recently proved higher phytoremediation potential than herbaceous plants due to their deeper root system and greater biomass growth. Indeed, this review sheds the light on the application of trees for the phytoremediation of salts and heavy metals in Egypt., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Introduction: Breast cancer (BC) is the commonest cancer among females worldwide. Some patients present initially at advanced stages and more than 50% of them will develop metastasis (MBC) at some point. Compared to single agents, combination chemotherapy produces higher response rates (RR), longer progression-free survival (PFS) than single agents. This is associated with remarkably higher toxicities. At the same time, overall survival (OS) is comparable. This study aimed to compare safety and efficacy of combination and sequential chemotherapy., Patients and Methods: Forty-six MBC patients were randomized to receive 6 cycles of the combination of paclitaxel (175 mg/m 2 ) and cisplatin (70 mg/m 2 ) (combination PC) or paclitaxel for 3 cycles followed by cisplatin for 3 cycles (sequential PC). Endpoints were RR, PFS, OS and safety., Results: Both combination and sequential PC produced similar RR (52% in both arms) and disease control rates (78.3% vs. 73.9%, p = .652). Responses were faster in the combination arm. Median PFS was 8.2 months in the combination compared to 5.0 months in the sequential arm (p = .064). The median OS was 16.5 and 18.8 months in the combination and sequential arms, respectively (p = .866). The combination was more toxic than sequential PC. Grade 3 toxicities were higher with combination PC than to sequential PC (48% vs. 4.3%; p < .001)., Conclusion: Sequential agent chemotherapy may provide similar response rate and overall survival to combination chemotherapy with much lower toxicities. The former can be considered the standard practice in most instances., (Copyright © 2018 National Cancer Institute, Cairo University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: We aimed to evaluate different copro-preservation conditions along the duration of one month for a better outcome of molecular diagnosis of Cryptosporidium species., Methods: Ten samples out of 380 fresh stool samples collected from patients with diarrhea proved positive after direct examination, concentration, staining and confirmed by immunochromatographic test. The study was conducted at the Diagnostic and Research Unit of Parasitic diseases, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University at the time interval from July 2014 to December 2015. Each stool sample was preserved in five different conditions; freezing at -20 °C, 70% ethyl alcohol, 10% formalin, 2.5% potassium dichromate (K dichromate) at 4 °C and 2.5% K dichromate at room temperature (RT). Then DNA extraction and nested PCR, with Cryptosporidium oocyst wall protein (COWP) gene were done from each sample at zero time (fresh specimens) as a standard for comparison with the preservation conditions at 10, 20 and 30 d., Results: Sensitivity of studied preservative conditions along the whole study duration showed best outcome from freezing at -20 °C (80%) then K dichromate (4 °C) (73.3%) followed by K dichromate (RT) (66.7%), then alcohol (33.3%), while formalin was the worst (0%) with a highly significant comparative outcome between the different conditions. Along the three extraction intervals, K dichromate (RT), unlike all the rest of conditions lacks the consistent preservative action., Conclusion: Our study highlights freezing at -20 °C to be the most suitable condition for preservation followed by K dichromate at 4 °C, K dichromate at RT, then 70% ethyl alcohol. Formalin (10%) is better to be avoided.