Healing effect of aloe vera gel,in non-healed ulcers

Objective:Aloe Vera gel(AVG) has a prominent role as a contemporary folk remedy.The Non-healed chronic ulcers of 16 non-responders to conventional treatment were treated with AVG for which the clinical efficacy was studied.Methods:This study included 16 patients having chronic ulcer(9 males and 7 females) with mean age of 41.8±14.6 who following failure treatment to conventional therapy,were dispensed AVG to apply. AVG is consisted from gel part of Aloe Vera plant plus one preservative material,in this study ECG jelly. The patients were assessed as responder whenever intensity of inflammation,the number and /or the size of ulcers have been reduced.Results:The period of time till healing(complete or reduction in size of ulcer), were from 5 to 160 days with mean of 31.2±36.4 days.The mean time of decreasing for secreting,swelling and redness was from 5-11 days.Spearman coefficient of correlation,showed no significant correlation between first size and depth of ulcer and timing till 50%reduction in size of ulcer.Conclusion:All patients had been treated with conventional treatment all to no avail.There were some full thickness ulcer which at the end of treatment we observed an improvement and normal skin for those ulcers.There was a minor complication like itching in one patient but no leading to stop treatment.These findings suggest that AVG is an excellent and safer choice than current conventional therapeutic management of chronic ulcers.

First Evidence of Hantavirus in Central Iran as an Emerging Viral Disease

Hantavirus is a zoonosis transmitted from rodents to humans. Asymptomatic infected rodents can secrete hantaviruses in the urine, feces, and saliva. The main route of infection transmission to human is aerosols contaminated with the virus. This study was designed to evaluate the serological and molecular prevalence of hantavirus as an emerging zoonoses disease among street sweepers in Isfahan province, central Iran. Serum samples from 200 street sweepers in healthy condition and those with recent renal failure were tested by ELISA (IgM and IgG). Molecular analysis was subsequently applied for IgM positive cases. From these samples, 9 (4.5%) were positive, of which 2 (22.22%) were positive for both IgM and RT-PCR, while 7 (77.77%) were positive for IgG. The mean age and work experience of the positive cases were 39.7 and 11.5 respectively. According to our observations, all positive cases reported prevalence of rodents in their work place. The logistic regression test showed that the age and work experience were not risk factors for being positive, but prevalence of rodents in work place was a risk factor for being positive, when compared with negative cases. This is the first comprehensive study on the prevalence of hantavirus with positive results coming from Iranian population, which can raise the public awareness for the hantavirus infections as a public health threat.