ABSTRACT
Poor educated people in some parts of Iran use burned mantles as a wound healing powder to prevent the bleeding and infections caused by injuries. Some lantern mantles contain low levels of radioactive thorium for maximizing the light output, while non-radioactive mantles contain yttrium. Although radioactive lantern mantles may cause a minimal radiation health hazard, it is generally believed that it would be dangerous when inhaled or ingested. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of burned radioactive lantern mantles on wound healing. Twenty rats were divided randomly into two groups of 10 animals each. After inducing general anesthesia, full thickness excision wound [314 +/- 31.4 mm[2]] was made on the dorsal neck in all animals. The 1st group received topical burned radioactive lantern mantle powder at 1st-3rd day after wound excision. The presence of radioactivity in the mantle was detected using a Monitor-4 survey meter. The 2nd group received non-radioactive lantern mantle powder at the same days. Accurate blind surface measurement of the wounds was performed by transparency tracing to assess the wound healing at 1st, 3rd, 7th, 10th and 15th days after excision. A progressive reduction in the wound area of both groups was observed. However, for thorium treated group, the rate of recovery was significantly enhanced compared to that of the control group. Although this value in the thorium group was not significantly different from that of the control group at the 3rd and 5th days after wounding, a statistically significant difference was observed between these two groups at the day7, day10 and day 15. The mean wound surface in thorium and control groups were 150.20 +/- 15.87 and 186.37 +/- 12.68 mm[2] at day7 [p<0.001], 92.90 +/- 15.97 and 134.12 +/- 14.19 mm[2] at day 10 [p<0.001], 1.40 +/- 0.41 and 8.56 +/- 2.04 mm[2] at day15 after wounding, respectively [p<0.01]. These findings suggest that low-level radioactive burned mantle accelerates wound healing in rats. However, as thorium oxide is a known human carcinogen, more research is needed to clarify if low levels of radioactive burned mantle can be utilized for enhancing wound healing
ABSTRACT
Decreased males' motivation for entering universities has caused a low male/female ratio in different university majors. This problem may lead to the development of a mono-sex system for health service providers and will affect the social health system. As females constitute the majority of students in most majors, in this study academic achievement of girls is compared to that of the boys.This cross-sectional study was performed on 114 medical and 50 dentistry students who were enrolled at Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences in the spring of 2003. Grade-point average [GPA] was used as a marker for academic achievement. The scores were classified into 3 groups; A [17-20], B [14-16.99] and C [less than 13.99]. Data were analyzed by Chi-square test.This study indicated that not only girls constitute the majority of students in the Medicine and Dentistry majors, but also the academic achievement of girls was significantly higher than that of the boys. Among medical students only 2.7% of the boys had A scores, while 18.2% of the girls had A scores. Furthermore, among dentistry students, none of the male students had A scores while 8% of the girls had an A score.It seems that the observed differences, are not related to academic intelligence. These differences may have originated from the decreased motivation in male students for studying efficiently after the enrollment