Increased arterial stiffness has been shown to predict cardiovascular mortality in patients with primary hypertension. Asymptomatic organ damage is known to precede cardiovascular events. We investigated the relationship between a recently proposed index of stiffness derived from ambulatory blood pressure (BP) and target organ damage in 188 untreated patients with primary hypertension. Ambulato...

Background: Stroke is known to be the third most prominent cause of death in the developing countries and the most common debilitating neurologic disease. This study aimed to investigate the association of platelet count (PC) and mean platelet volume (MPV) index with various stroke types. Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out on patients over the age of 18 years who presented wit...

BACKGROUND Chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients often have sympathetic hyperactivity, which contributes to the pathogenesis of hypertension and cardiovascular organ damage. Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors (ACEi) and angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARB) reduce sympathetic hyperactivity. Ideally, treatment should eliminate the relation between sympathetic activity and organ dama...

Introduction: In 3DCRT the number of therapeutic fields has dramatic impact on treatment results especially in stomach cancer. Traditionally, for radiotherapy of stomach cancer the therapeutic procedure was using two fields (AP- PA or AP Lateral with wedge) to achieve smooth and homogeneous dose distribution in tumor. But nowadays, adding lateral or oblique fields to aforement...

BACKGROUND Latest research shows that the lower resting values of right ventricular (RV) myocardial % strain may represent a physiologic change rather than subclinical myocardial damage. Therefore, we assessed load-independent changes to the RV as a consequence of high intensity training by measuring the Isovolumic acceleration (IVA) of the free wall of the RV in conjunction with NT pro-BNP mea...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) injection into the testes on spermatogenesis and apoptosis in a varicocele-induced adolescent rat model. SETTING University hospital urology research laboratory. ANIMAL(S) Six-week-old male Wistar rats (n = 32). INTERVENTION The rats were divided into six groups: control group (n = 6), sham operated group (n ...

BACKGROUND Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) is an endogenous nitric oxide inhibitor and a new independent risk factor for endothelial dysfunction and cardiovascular disease. OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationship between plasma ADMA levels and cardiovascular events (CVEs) and disease characteristics in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). METHODS Demographic and clinical d...

A seismic risk analysis addressed to earthquake emergency management and protection strategies planning, requires territorial scale evaluation; to this aim a macroseismic method for the vulnerability assessment of built-up area is presented. The method is derived, in a conceptually rigorous way, by the use of Probability and of Fuzzy Set Theory, considering Macroseismic Scale definitions. Damag...

The present study aimed to evaluate the association between whole body exposure to extremely low frequency magnetic field (ELF-MF) and genotoxic , cytotoxic hazards in brain and bone marrow cells of newborn rats. Newborn rats (10 days after delivery) were exposed continuously to 50 Hz, 0.5 mT for 30 days. The control group was treated as the exposed one with the sole difference that the rats we...