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As a major consequence of medical interventions, quality of life (QoL) is of great importance for patients suffering from refractory diseases, particularly cancer. The unbiased measurement of changes in QoL is thus crucial in such cases. A prevalent bias related to QoL research is the ‘response shift’ (RS) phenomenon. This review article aims to define RS and the challenges in measuring it. In addition, it addresses the methodological approaches used to measure this bias in observational and clinical studies. Response shift refers to changes in one’s health condition as a result of changes in the meaning of one’s self-evaluation. These changes result when the patient faces his/her new conditions and may be reflected as greater as or smaller than they actually are. The present article describes the individualized methods, the preference-based methods, the structural equation modeling and the then-test method used for evaluating RS, and discusses their applications. Finally, by comparing these methods, it concludes that the simplest and most efficient approach for evaluating RS is the then-test approach. By emphasizing that these methods should be applied in clinical studies, the present article describes the most important methods for evaluating RS. The effect of RS has been neglected in the majority of QoL studies. We therefore recommend taking into account the effect of RS in the interpretation of QoL changes in longitudinal studies.

The aim of radiation therapy treatment planning is to achieve an optimal balance between delivering a high dose to target volume and a low dose to healthy tissues. In order to refrain any complications resulting from the dose to the surrounding normal organs, the role of treatment plan has been critically evaluated in term of how large the volume or mass of normal tissues exposed in the radiation. The integral dose, hence, is one of the important guidance for predicting the radiation effects and choosing the treatment plan. The goal of this study is to compare and investigate the integral doses in conformal 3D vs. IMRT plan. Dosimetric data from five patients of prostate cancer, treated by simultaneous integrated boost IMRT and 3D CRT were evaluated in this prospective study. Target volume and organs at risk were contoured using M.I.R.S Treatment Planning System (Module Integrated Radiotherapy System version 5.0.00). A dose of 80 Gy to the PTV1, 57 Gy to RTV2 and 62 Gy to the PTV3 and 70Gy in 3D CRT and for P V, was prescribed. For each patient IMRT plans using S.A.S (dynamic Step and Shoot) and 3D CRT with 6, 10 and 18MV energies, were done. To calculate the ID to the normal healthy tissue all the target volumes were achieved. The Integral Dose was calculated as the mean- dose times the volume of the structure. A total of thirty IMRT and 3D CRT plans were performed for evaluation. The mean ID received by rectum for 3D CRT was almost 1.04% greater than IMRT while in bladder mean value of ID for IMRT is also bigger than 3D CRT approximately about 1.04%. In RFH and LFH the mean values of ID for 3D CRT were almost 1.05% and 1.06% greater than IMRT, respectively. Due to the three PTVs in IMRT the integral dose in target volume has the biggest value comparing with 3D CRT, considerably.

Introduction: Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) is among the most prevalent blood cancers in people over the age of 40. In addition to clinical-pathologic staging and blood tests, another crucial prognostic factor of CLL is the immunoglobulin variable heavy chain mutation analysis. Finding the most prevalent mutation type and conducting a molecular analysis of it in the majority of the patients can contribute to identifying the disease pattern in a specific region or country. In the present study, we have used molecular detection methods in order to find the relationship between clinical pathologic findings and immunoglobulin heavy chain mutations in CLL patients in Iran.Material and methods: From 2009-2011, 26 patients with a suspected diagnosis of CLL were randomly selected from patients referred to Imam Khomeini Hospital. All patients underwent a clinical staging of the disease and had flow cytometric analysis performed on blood samples. The panels of cell surface markers used for the diagnosis of Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia include CD19, CD3, CD23, CD10 and CD5. The diagnosis confirmed a minimum of 20% positive expression of dual CD5 and CD19 markers. Genomic DNA was then extracted from the patients’ blood and IGVH mutation analysis was conducted with pGEM-T kit.Results: Patients were in an age range of 42 to 80, with their mean age being 62 (SE=1.87) and 73% of them being male. Their mean WBC count, lymphocytes percentage, average hemoglobin level and platelet count were, respectively, 56000/microliter, 85%, 12 gr/dl and 150000/microliter. According to their molecular analysis, 38.9% of patients were unmutated and 61.1% showed mutation in the variable heavy chain locus. The most common mutation had occurred in the IGVH3 allele (66.66%). The mean overall survival rate of patients, mutated and unmutated, was, respectively, 39 (95%CI 32, 46) and 31 (95%CI 26, 36) months (P=0.407).Benet stage had statistically meaningful relation to patients survival (p=0.02)Discussion: Similar to the findings of other studies, IGVH3 mutations were found to be prevalent by this study too. Although a correlation was found to exist between the patients’ survival and IGVH mutation, it was not statistically significant due to the limited number of the patients. We can conclude that clinical methods are still valuable in determining the prognosis of patients with CLL today.

Background : Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the most common cancers worldwide and in Iran. As conventional therapies such as surgery and chemotherapy are invasive with adverse effects, current studies are important as they are conducted to find natural compounds with few adverse effects. In this study, melittin with 26 amino acids was isolated and purified from bee venom and its effect on the viability and proliferation of gastric cancer cells was investigated.Methods: At first, melittin was purified from honeybee venom by a reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP- HPLC) and using C18 column. The biologic activity of melittin was evaluated by hemolytic test on red blood cells to melittin standard. To investigate the effect of melittin on viability and proliferation of AGS human gastric adenocarcinoma cells, the related cells were cultured in a 96-well plate and treated with serially diluted concentrations of melittin for 6 and 12 hours and their mortality was determined by MTT [(3-(4,5- dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide] colorimetric method at 540 nm wavelengths.Results: The obtained chromatogram from RP-HPLC showed that melittin comprised 50% of the studied bee venom. SDS-PAGE analysis of melittin fraction confirmed purity of isolated melittin. Hemolytic assay showed that the extracted melittin indicates a strong hemolytic activity (HD50=0.55μg/ml). MTT assay showed that melittin strongly inhibits proliferation of gastric cancer cells at concentrations more than 2μg/ml. This inhibitory effect depends on melittin concentration and time.Conclusion: The results of this study showed that melittin is a strong inhibitor of proliferation of the gastric cancer cells. Also, it was observed that this inhibitory effect is increased with increasing concentrations of melittin and incubation time.

Background: Cancer is one of the three health issues of the society and the third cause of mortality in Iran. Food habits play a significant role in preventing cancer. The present study therefore, was carried out to assess food habits of Tehran citizens for cancer prevention.Methods: This study is a cross- sectional study was conducted with a sample of 2500 Tehran citizens who were recruited through systematic cluster random sampling. Data were collected using questionnaires including demographic factors and food habits. Validity and reliability of tool was gained through content validity and AlfaCronbach test. Data was collected in one time occasion and in person. All statistics were computed by the SPSS software using descriptive and inferential tests.Results: The showed demonstrated that the 38.2% of Tehran citizens had their BMI at the level of being overweight and upper. The food habits for cancer prevention were relatively appropriate for most of them (61.3%), but no one was at the desired level.Co clusion: Concerning the study results that no one had proper food habits for cancer prevention, public education and increasing awareness of people in this regards by ministry of health, cancer institutes, mass media, educational system, ministry of labour and social affairs is strongly recommended.