BACKGROUND Palliative treatments and stents are necessary for relieving dysphagia in patients with esophageal cancer. The aim of this study was to simultaneously compare available treatments in terms of complications. METHODS Web of Science, Medline, Scopus, Cochrane Library and Embase were searched. Statistical heterogeneity was assessed using the Chi2 test and was quantified by I2. The resu...

Background and Aim: Lasers can serve as a new powerful tool in dentistry. High intensity laser therapy is becoming the treatment of choice compared with conventional periodontal therapy due to accurate incision and soft and hard tissue ablation, hemostasis, reduction of postoperative pain and infection, optimal debridement, and enhanced healing. Although high intensity laser therapy assumes to ...

Gastroesophageal reflux disorder (GERD), a common disorder in the Western world, can lead to complications that include esophageal stricture and esophageal adenocarcinoma. Multiple challenges are associated with GERD treatment. First, lack of symptoms does not correlate with the absence of or the healing of esophageal lesions. Second, proton pump inhibitors, the current standard of care for GER...

The outcome of patients with osteosarcoma has not significantly improved in the last three decades. Therefore, there is still a need for the development of more effective therapeutic strategies. Methoxyamine (MX) is a base excision repair (BER) inhibitor that has shown anticancer potential by sensitizing a variety of tumor cells to ionizing radiation and chemotherapeutic drugs. In the present s...

The hypothesis that plants supplied with organic fertilizers are better defended against insect herbivores than those supplied with synthetic fertilizers was tested over two field seasons. Organic and synthetic fertilizer treatments at two nitrogen concentrations were supplied to Brassica plants, and their effects on the abundance of herbivore species and plant chemistry were assessed. The orga...

Skin metastases of breast cancer are usually late events in the course of tumor progression and signify a poor prognosis. They may remain as a therapeutic challenge especially after failure of standard treatments. Topical interventions, together with or without radiotherapy, may only palliate the symptoms temporarily. However, there may be alternative treatment modalities for unresectable breas...

OBJECTIVE Non-hormonal treatment for menopausal vasomotor symptoms (VMS) is needed in women in whom there are medical or personal concerns on the use of hormone therapy. This paper reviews conventional and phytochemical therapies available for the relief of VMS, on their mechanisms of action, their efficacy and safety concerns. METHODS Medline was searched through Pubmed on the names of the d...

The performance of a conventional sequence (pre-ozonation, coagulation/flocculation/sedimentation, filtration, disinfection) and two advance sequences (pre-ozonation, nanofiltration; pre-ozonation, coagulation/flocculation/sedimentation, nanofiltration) on the removal of natural organic matter (NOM) and disinfection by-products (DBPs) formation potential was evaluated. Raw and treated waters we...

BACKGROUND Aloe Vera is one of the endemic plants in southern Iran, which has been mentioned in the textbooks of Persian medicine since 2500 years ago. The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness and cost of Aloe Vera gel with conventional treatments in patients with chronic ulcers. METHODS This comparative study was conducted on 60 patients with chronic ulcers (more than 3 weeks) ...

The allostatic theory of drug abuse describes the brain's reward system alterations as substance misuse progresses. Neural adaptations arising from the reward system itself and from the antireward system provide the subject with functional stability, while affecting the person's mood. We propose a computational hypothesis describing how a virtual subject's drug consumption, cognitive substrate,...