steoporosis is a common disease in which the bones become prone to fracture as a result of loss of bone mineral density (BMD). The estrogen receptor (ER) gene is a candidate gene for osteoporosis. This study assesses the relation between estrogen receptor-α gene polymorphism and osteoporosis in a population of Iranian women. Materials & Methods: In the present study, we investigated 200 preand/...

BACKGROUND Genetic diversity of three polymorphic markers in the phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH) gene region including PvuII (a), PAHSTR and MspI were investigated. METHODS Unrelated individuals (n=139) from the Iranian populations were genotyped using primers specific to PAH gene markers including PvuII(a), MspI and PAHSTR. The amplified products for PvuII(a), MspI were digested using the ap...

BACKGROUND Chronic pain can be associated with limitations in patient function. Assessment of pain-related limitations is one of the important outcome domains that should be considered when designing chronic pain clinical trials. Although a validated instrument for the assessment of pain-related disability in Iranian chronic low back pain (CLBP) patients exists, to date there is no psychometric...

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurologic disorders. Underlying cause of epilepsy is unknown in 60 % of the patients. Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular parasite which is capable of forming tissue cysts in brain of chronically infected hosts including humans. Some epidemiological studies suggested an association between toxoplasmosis and acquisition of epilepsy. In this study we determin...

BACKGROUND Pancreatic cancer is a fatal cancer with a 5-year survival of only about 4% for all tumors. Mortality is a familiar projection to address the burden of cancers, but according to the Iranian death registry, about 20% of death statistics are still recorded in misclassified categories. The aim of this study was to estimate pancreatic cancer mortality for Iranian population, using a baye...

Considering that MAPK (mitogen- activated protein kinase) signaling pathway has an important role in the progression of inflammatory cytokine secretion in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), we have recently investigated the reported genetic polymorphism from genome wide association study in MAP3K1 (mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase kinase 1) in diabetes as an important member of MAPK signal...

OBJECTIVES To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on the contributions of GST genetic variants to the risk of diabetic retinopathy in an Iranian population. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine whether sequence variation in glutathione S-transferase gene (GSTM1 and GSTT1) is associated with development of diabetic retinopathy in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM)...

BACKGROUND The CARD15/NOD2 gene, located on the pericentromeric region of chromosome 16 (IBD1) has been reported to have an association with IBD, especially Crohn's disease. Three common mutations of CARD15 are variably associated with Crohn's disease in different ethnic groups. We evaluated the frequency of these mutations (R702W, G908R and 1007fsinsC) in Iranian IBD patients and compared it w...

BACKGROUND Determination of reference ranges of each serum protein in normal population of each country is required for studies and clinical interpretation. The aim of this study was defining reference range values of immunoglobulins and complement components in Iranian healthy children. METHODS This study was conducted from June 2003 to June 2006 in Immunology, Asthma and Allergy Research In...

OBJECTIVE(S) Coumarin hydroxylase (CYP2A6) is a polymorphic enzyme, and during the last decade has received a lot of attention because it is the principle human nicotine C-oxidase, which activates a number of procarcinogens, and metabolizes drugs. MATERIALS AND METHODS 150 healthy Iranian volunteers, (96 male, 54 female) aged 19 to 63 years old, were given 5 mg coumarin orally after an overni...