ABSTRACT
Background@#Family function is a necessary factor that influences older people’s health. The Family APGAR has been widely used to study family functions. However, there has been no Persian version of this instrument to assess family function in older people. The aim of this study was to determine the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the Family APGAR Scale to evaluate the perception of family functions. @*Methods@#The “forward-backward” procedure was applied to translate the scale from English into Persian. The translated version was checked in terms of validity and reliability, with a sample of 281 older people selected from retirement centers. The factor structure of the scale was also tested using a confirmatory factor analysis. To test reliability, internal consistency and test–retest analyses were performed. @*Results@#The results of the confirmatory factor analysis indicated a good structural model. Criterion-related validity was strongly supported by the pattern of association between the APGAR Scale and the social support survey. Cronbach’s α of the scale was 0.88 and test–retest reliability ranged from 0.96 to 0.98, indicating a good range of reliability. @*Conclusion@#The findings of this study suggest that the Iranian version of the Family APGAR is a valid and reliable scale to evaluate family functions in health intervention programs.
ABSTRACT
Depression is one of the most important causes of disability and loss of useful life of people around the world. Acute respiratory infection caused a large number of severe illnesses and deaths of the world and most of these due to viral infections, which is estimated more than 80% of respiratory infections. Detection of viruses by immune pathogen recognition receptors activates the intracellular signaling cascade and eventually cause produces interferons. Inflammatory process begins with secretion of interferons and the expression of interferon-stimulated genes. One of the most important of these genes is indoleamine-pyrrole 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO), which plays a major role in tryptophan catabolism. IDO is an intracellular monomeric enzyme that is also responsible for breaking down and consuming tryptophan in the Kynurenine pathway. Increased inflammation has been linked to decrease tryptophan concentrations and increase kynurenine levels. We tried to explain the role of inflammation by viral respiratory infections in causing depression.
ABSTRACT
The recent outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a highly transmissible virus with a likely animal origin, has posed major and unprecedented challenges to millions of lives across the affected nations of the world. This outbreak first occurred in China, and despite massive regional and global attempts shortly thereafter, it spread to other countries and caused millions of deaths worldwide. This review presents key information about the characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and its associated disease (namely, coronavirus disease 2019) and briefly discusses the origin of the virus. Herein, we also briefly summarize the strategies used against viral spread and transmission.
ABSTRACT
Klebsiella pneumoniae is a hospital-acquired pathogen that leads to various infections. Hence, efforts to develop an effective vaccine against that pathogen are well documented. Our interest is the production of the previously designed multi-epitope vaccine construct against the K. pneumoniae in a prokaryotic host. Therefore, a new construct containing the nucleotide sequence of the novel vaccine was successfully expressed in Escherichia coli and then purified by Ni-NTA spin column. The purified recombinant protein can be considered as potential vaccine candidate for wet-laboratory analysis aiming to fight K pneumoniae