(Press-News.org) Iron overload is a common and serious problem in thalassemic major patients. As iron accumulation is toxic in the body's tissues, accurate estimation of iron stores is of great importance in these patients to prevent iron overload by an appropriate iron chelating therapy. Liver biopsy is the gold standard for evaluating iron stores but it is an invasive method which is not easily repeatable in patients. Introduction of other more applicable methods seems to be necessary.
A research article published on January 28, 2011 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The authors reported their experience of using T2*-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI T2*) for determining iron overload in beta-thalassemic patients in Iran. They compared liver MRI T2* results in thalassemic patients with their liver biopsy results to determine if it is possible to substitute MRI T2* to assess iron overload in these patients.
The results indicated that the serum ferritin level is not a reliable method for estimating the level of iron overload in thalassemic patients. MRI T2* is a more accurate and non-invasive method which they recommend for measurement of iron load in these patients.
INFORMATION:Reference: Zamani F, Razmjou S, Akhlaghpoor S, Eslami SM, Azarkeivan A, Amiri A. T2* magnetic resonance imaging of the liver in thalassemic patients in Iran. World J Gastroenterol 2011;17(4): 522-525
http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/full/v17/i4/522.htm
Correspondence to: Dr. Farhad Zamani, Associate Professor, Gastroenterology and Liver Disease Research Center, Firouzgar Hospital, Valadi Street, Valiasr Square, Tehran 0098-3137875661, Iran. zamani.farhad@gmail.com
Telephone: +98-21-1547311 Fax: +98-21-88942622
About World Journal of Gastroenterology
World Journal of Gastroenterology (WJG), a leading international journal in gastroenterology and hepatology, has established a reputation for publishing first class research on esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, liver cancer, viral hepatitis, colorectal cancer, and H. pylori infection and provides a forum for both clinicians and scientists. WJG has been indexed and abstracted in Current Contents/Clinical Medicine, Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch) and Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, Index Medicus, MEDLINE and PubMed, Chemical Abstracts, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Abstracts Journals, Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology and Hepatology, CAB Abstracts and Global Health. ISI JCR 2009 IF: 2.092. WJG is a weekly journal published by WJG Press. The publication dates are the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th day of every month. WJG is supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 30224801 and No. 30424812, and was founded with the name of China National Journal of New Gastroenterology on October 1, 1995, and renamed WJG on January 25, 1998.
END
Failure to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions effectively has led to intensifying debate on geoengineering - deliberate large-scale schemes to slow the rate at which Earth is heating up. The public debate often mixes opinion with fact so scientists have now released the first summary for policymakers on ocean fertilization, one of the earliest geoengineering proposals. The authors report that the chances of success of using ocean fertilization to deal with climate change is low.
Ocean fertilization involves adding iron or other nutrients to the surface of the ocean ...
Nearly ten percent of all cases of depression are so severe that the patients do not respond to any established treatment method. Targeted stimulation of areas in the brain using a type of "brain pacemaker" has recently raised hopes: According to initial studies, half of patients with the most severe depression treated in this manner see a significant improvement in mood. Physicians from the University of Bonn, together with colleagues from the US, have suggested a new target structure for deep brain stimulation (as it is technically called). They hope to achieve an even ...
Computer engineers at North Carolina State University have developed hardware that allows programs to operate more efficiently by significantly boosting the speed at which the "cores" on a computer chip communicate with each other.
The core, or central processing unit, is the brain of a computer chip; most chips currently contain between four and eight cores. In order to perform a task more quickly using multiple cores on a single chip, those cores need to communicate with each other. But there are no direct ways for cores to communicate. Instead, one core sends data ...
In order to arrive at this result the researchers calculated the price with a model that measures the number of medals according to government expenditure in sport, along with other variables. "This model allows accurate measurement of how much extra expense is necessary to win each medal," the UC3M professors Juan de Dios Tena and Ramón J. Flores explained, who carried out this study within the Sports Economics Research Group, headed by professor David Forrest, of the University of Salford (England) and which also includes Ismael Sanz from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos ...
If you think histamines are your nemesis during allergy season, here's something that might change your perspective. New research published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (http://www.jleukbio.org) shows that histamine could be an important molecule to developing new treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS). In the study, the scientists analyzed the role of histamine in an animal model of multiple sclerosis and found that histamine plays a critical role in preventing MS or lessening its effects.
"We hope that our study will help design new therapies for autoimmune ...
Milan, Italy, 31 January 2010 – Wouldn't life be easy if everything happened as we anticipated? In reality, our brains are able to adapt to the unexpected using an inbuilt network that makes predictions about the world and monitors how those predictions turn out. An area at the front of the brain, called the orbitofrontal cortex, plays a central role and studies have shown that patients with damage to this area confuse memories with reality and continue to anticipate events that are no longer likely to happen. The brain's ability to react adaptively, becomes crucial for ...
From the highest mountaintop comes a new research report in the FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) that gets to the bottom of what happens to the hearts of people when exposed to low-levels of oxygen, such as those on Mount Everest or in the intensive care unit of a hospital. In the study, researchers monitored subjects who spent time at the Mount Everest Base Camp and found that the low-level oxygen conditions at the base came caused changes in heart function resembling what is seen in conditions that severely restrict the amount of oxygen to the heart, such as cystic ...
Bats tend to have a bad reputation. They sleep all day, party at night, and are commonly thought to be riddled with rabies. A study by University of Calgary researchers has confirmed that bats are not as disease-ridden as the stigma suggests.
"The notion that bats have high rates of rabies is not true," says Brandon Klug, a graduate student at the University of Calgary and the lead author of a paper published in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases.
"Those of us that work with bats have always known the rates are low; and now we have evidence that bats aren't disease-ridden ...
Tel Aviv — The new environmentally-friendly concept of municipal "bike-sharing" is taking over European cities like Paris, and American cities like New York are also looking into the idea. It allows a subscriber to "borrow" a bike from one of hundreds of locations in the city, use it, and return it to another location at the end of the journey. It's good for commuters and for running short errands.
While the idea is gaining speed and subscribers at the 400 locations around the world where it has been implemented, there have been growing pains — partly because the projects ...
The ability of some forms of plankton and bacteria to build an extra natural layer of nanoparticle-like armour has inspired chemists at the University of Warwick to devise a startlingly simple way to give drug bearing polymer vesicles (microscopic polymer based sacs of liquid) their own armoured protection.
The Warwick researchers have been able to decorate these hollow structures with a variety of nanoparticles opening a new strategy in the design of vehicles for drug release, for example by giving the vesicle "stealth" capabilities which can avoid the body's defences ...
