BACKGROUND Once considered as the main public health problem in developed countries, obesity has become a major problem throughout the world and developing countries, like Iran, are joining the global obesity pandemic. We determined the prevalence of overweight, obesity, and hypertension in a large cohort of Iranians and compared age-adjusted rates with the rates in the US. METHODS Golestan C...

Multiple studies have demonstrated decreased recidivism and increased treatment engagement for individuals with serious mental illness involved in Mental Health Courts (MHC). However, the limited availability of social and fiscal resources requires an analysis of the relationship between a program's effectiveness and its costs. Outcome costs associated with a sample of 105 participants discharg...

Recent work has demonstrated that nonstimulatory endogenous peptides can enhance T cell recognition of antigen, but MHCI- and MHCII-restricted systems have generated very different results. MHCII-restricted TCRs need to interact with the nonstimulatory peptide-MHC (pMHC), showing peptide specificity for activation enhancers or coagonists. In contrast, the MHCI-restricted cells studied to date s...

BACKGROUND Few studies have considered source-specific micronutrient intake in relation to mortality under the consideration that dietary and supplemental intake could exhibit different effects. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the association between intake of vitamin C, E, folate, beta-carotene from diet and supplements, and overall mortality. Furthermore, to examine effect modification by smoking, al...

The genetic and epigenetic influences that are responsible for the establishment and maintenance of the unique phenotype of the extraocular muscles (EOMs) are poorly understood. A role for visual cues in shaping EOM maturation was assessed in rats by using two visual deprivation paradigms, dark rearing and monocular deprivation. Isoforms of the contractile protein myosin heavy chain (MHC) were ...

Mesophotic hard corals (MHC) are increasingly threatened by a growing number of anthropogenic stressors, including impacts from fishing, land-based sources of pollution, and ocean acidification. However, little is known about their geographic distributions (particularly around the Pacific islands) because it is logistically challenging and expensive to gather data in the 30 to 150 meter depth r...

Vaccines are the greatest single instrument of prophylaxis against infectious diseases, with immeasurable benefits to human wellbeing. The accurate and reliable prediction of peptide-MHC binding is fundamental to the robust identification of T-cell epitopes and thus the successful design of peptide- and protein-based vaccines. The prediction of MHC class II peptide binding has hitherto proved r...

BACKGROUND General practitioners (GPs) use gut feelings to diagnose cancer in an early stage, but little is known about its impact. METHOD Prospective cohort study of patients in 44 general practices throughout the Netherlands, from January 2010 until December 2013. GPs completed a questionnaire regarding gut feelings, patient and GP characteristics, if they noticed a cancer-related gut feeli...

BACKGROUND Anogenital distance (AGD) is a feasible and accepted parameter of exogenous or endogenous androgens effects on development of reproductive system. OBJECTIVES Since there is no report on penile length (PL) and AGD in our region, we investigated these parameters in male newborns in Golestan Province, Iran. PATIENTS AND METHODS In this cross-sectional study, we measured stretched PL...

Introduction: Golestan, a province located north of Persian Gulf in northeastern part of Iran is a well known area for high risk of esophageal cancer (EC) in the world. There is no information about healthcare utilization in populations residing in the area. This study was conducted to assess utilization of healthcare and its associated factors among esophageal cancer patients in this region as...