This study examined the effect of 10% and 16% carbamide peroxide bleaching agents on the surface microhardness of micro-particulate feldspathic ceramics (VM7 and VM13, Vita Zahnfabrik). Forty specimens (8-mm diameter, 2-mm thickness) were divided into four groups (n=10): GI-VM7 + 10% Whiteness, G2-VM7 + 16% Whiteness, G3-VM13 + 10% and G4-VM13 + 16% Whiteness. The home-use bleaching agents were...

Some adaptive test procedures are developed for the generalized Behrens-Fisher problem. The one having a deterministic approach is based on calculating a measure of symmetry from each sample and using them as a basis for choosing between the modified Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test (Fligner and Policello, 1981) and the modified Mood’s median test (Fligner and Rust, 1982). The other one is a probabil...

OBJECTIVE(S) The aim of this study was to investigate the association between HLA class I alleles (HLA-A*02, HLA-A*24, HLA-Cw*08, HLA-B5401) and proviral load in HTLV-I associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraperesis (HAM/TSP) patients in Iranian population. MATERIALS AND METHODS 20 new cases of HAM/TSP patients and 30 HTLV-I infected healthy carriers were recruited. Peripheral blood sampl...

PURPOSE In oncology, texture features extracted from positron emission tomography with 18-fluorodeoxyglucose images (FDG-PET) are of increasing interest for predictive and prognostic studies, leading to several tens of features per tumor. To select the best features, the use of a random forest (RF) classifier was investigated. METHODS Sixty-five patients with an esophageal cancer treated with...

Materials and Methods: A total of 1,422 subjects, 704 women (49.5%) and 718 men (50.5%), were enrolled in the Maracaibo City Metabolic Syndrome Prevalence Study. The results were expressed as medians and inter-quartile ranges (p25-p75). Differences were determined through the Mann-Whitney U test and one-way ANOVA test with the Bonferroni adjustment. A multiple logistic regression model was desi...

BACKGROUND Scar tissue formation is the major cause of failure in peripheral nerve surgery. Use of a hyaluronic acid-carboxymethylcellulose (HA-CMC) membrane (Seprafilm) as a solid anti-adhesion barrier agent is one of the therapeutic approaches to reduce postoperative scar tissue formation. However, a solid membrane may not be suitable for repair of a weak peripheral nerve site. This study exa...

AIM To correlate prolactin concentrations in the sera of patients with metastatic breast cancer with time interval to appearance of metastases, their location, and size. METHOD The prospective study included 46 female patients with histologically confirmed diagnosis of breast cancer. The patients were recruited from the Health Center outpatient clinic and University Hospital Center day-care h...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of physical exercise (marcha gait) on heart rate variability indices in Mangalarga Marchador horses. Twenty-five animals, fourteen females and eleven males, aged 6.4 ± 2.7 years and with a mean weight of 428.3 ± 24.7 kg, were used. Electrocardiograms were recorded at two different time points: rest and immediately after exercise (40 min of aer...