Levels of Blood Biomarkers among Patients with Myocardial Infarction in Comparison to Control Group.

BACKGROUND: Myocardial infarction (MI) as a term for a heart attack happens due to reduced blood flow to heart myocardium and lack of oxygen supply caused by plaques in the interior walls of coronary arteries. With respect to the importance of MI etiology, we aimed to study the relationship of MI and blood examination variables. METHODS: This study was conducted in Mazandaran Heart Center as a hospital-based case-control Comprising 894 participants including 465 cases and 429 controls, individually matched by sex and age. Considered blood markers were analyzed using routine laboratory methods and equipment. RESULTS: Of all participants, 64.3% of the cases and 51.0% of the controls were males with a mean age of 61.2 (±13.8) in cases and 62.4 (±14.) in controls. We could not find any differences between cases and controls for total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and alkaline-phosphatase (ALP) (P>0.05). However, levels of creatine-kinase-muscle/brain (CK-MB) (P<0.0001), fasting-blood-sugar (FBS) (P<0.0001), aspartate-aminotransferase (AST) (P<0.0001), alanine-transferase (ALT) (P<0.0001) and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) (P=0.001) were significantly higher in cases compared to the controls (P<0.05). Multivariable analyses revealed that the risk of MI was associated with high levels of AST (adjusted OR=24.3, 95%CI=3.5±165.6, P=0.001) and LDL (adjusted OR=7.4, 95%CI=1.0±51.8, P=0.001). CONCLUSION: Our investigation indicated that the levels of CK-MB, FBS, AST, ALT and ESR were significantly higher in patients with MI. Besides, our findings showed that the risk of MI in cases with high levels of AST and LDL was about 24 and 7 times more than the control group respectively.

Improving the Photocatalytic Activity of Modified Anatase TiO2 with Different Concentrations of Aluminum under Visible Light: Mechanistic Survey.

Visible light-driven Al-doped TiO2 with different aluminum contents (2, 5 and 10 mol%) were synthesized via a facile sol-gel method. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), UV-visible diffuse reflectance, energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy as well as X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) methods were used for the characterization of the obtained nanoparticles. The photocatalytic performance of the samples was evaluated by the degradation of rhodamine B (RhB) under visible light irradiation. The yield of the degradation RhB was estimated to be 71%, 89%, 65% and 56%, for the bare TiO2 , 2%, 5% and 10% Al-doped TiO2 , respectively. It was found that 2 mol% of Al-doped TiO2 shows the best photocatalytic performance. In low concentration of dopant, separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs promoted, and subsequently, the degradation efficiency increased. It was proposed that the degradation of RhB by 2 mol% Al-doped TiO2 photocatalyst follows both N-deethylation and chromophore cleavage mechanisms, while the N-deethylation still predominated over cleavage of dye chromophore structure. The key role of hydroxyl radicals in RhB degradation was verified by the effects of scavengers. In addition, the photocatalyst can be reused for three runs without any significant loss of its catalytic activity.