A retrospective case-control study was conducted to determine whether liver cirrhosis might be a risk factor for radiocontrast induced nephropathy as has been suggested. Data from 72 patients with cirrhosis and 72 patients without cirrhosis who all received 100-150 ml of low osmolality radiocontrast medium for abdominal or chest computerized tomography scan were reviewed. Blood urea nitrogen and creatinine were recorded before and 48-72 h after the administration of an intravenous radiocontrast agent. Acute renal failure developed in two patients with cirrhosis (2.8%) and one patient in the control group (1.4%). This difference was not significant. There was no significant change in blood urea nitrogen and creatinine in either group after radiocontrast injection. Both of the cirrhotic patients who developed radiocontrast induced nephropathy had received high-dose diuretics and were hypovolemic. We conclude that hepatic cirrhosis per se may not be a risk factor for radiocontrast-induced nephropathy.

Background: The increased degradation of tryptophan (Trp) along the kynurenine (Kyn) pathway due to inflammation and/or activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis has been reported among the biological factors involved in the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder (MDD) and suicide. However, the interaction among these multiple factors is not yet completely clarified. Method: We studied plasma levels of Trp, Kyn, cortisol and proinflammatory cytokines (IL-1, IL-6, IL-12, IL-20) and calculated the ratio Kyn/Trp as an index of the breakdown of Trp into Kyn in 31 suicidal MDD patients and 67 non-suicidal MDD patients. Result: We confirmed that suicidal MDD patients have reduced plasma Trp, higher Kyn and Kyn/Trp ratio, and no difference in cortisol levels than non-suicidal MDD patients. IL-1 and IL-12 levels were significantly higher in suicidal MDD than in non-suicidal MDD (p=0.034 and p=0.023, respectively), whereas Il-6 and IL-20 levels were equal in the two groups. The Kyn/Trp ratio was positively correlated with a pro-inflammatory cytokines index (r=0.309, p=0.002) and cortisol (r=0.368, p=0.001). Notably, the variance in the Kyn/Trp ratio explained by the model, including both cortisol and inflammatory parameters as dependent variables, substantially improved compared with the models in which the two parameters were considered separately. Conclusion: These findings show that both cortisol and proinflammatory cytokines are involved in the enhanced breakdown of Trp into Kyn occurring in suicidal MDD patients, thus adding new knowledge on the biological mechanisms leading to the activation of the Kyn pathway in MDD and suicide.

The effect of cadmium chloride (150 mg/l) and mercury (II) chloride (80 mg/l) either alone or in combination in drinking water for 4 weeks on function and structure of the liver of male rats was studied. Results indicated that the ratio of liver weight to body weight and the activities of serum alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase and alkaline phosphatase noted in rats co-exposed to cadmium and mercury were intermediate between those noted in the individually metal treated rats. The histopathological study showed that the individual metal and the combined metal treatments caused severe liver damage. The degree of these changes noted in rats co-exposed to cadmium and mercury was not higher than those signalized in individual treatment. The biochemical and the histological changes observed in rats co-exposed to cadmium and mercury show that there is not an additive effect between these two metals.

Land cover/use changes specially the forest cover changes affect the local surface temperature (LST) of the earth. In this study, a combination of remote sensing and GIS techniques was used to scrutinize the interactions between LST anomalies and deforestation in Sardasht County, NW Iran. The land cover/use change layers of the study area were extracted from Landsat satellite imagery based on Binary Encoding classification and change detection technique. The radiometric correction analysis were done for each Landsat image to derive LST map layers. According to the results, a descending trend in forest cover with a total 2560 ha decline in area and an ascending trend of about 4 degrees rise in surface temperature values on both forest and non-forest areas were detected in the study area from 1984 to 2017. The temporal and spatial analysis yielded high rates of reverse temporal correlation (-0.81) between forest areas and LST anomalies while the correlation value of 0.76 was found for non-forest areas and LST. The regression analysis of the values confirmed the correlation results to be trustable at 99 percent. It was also found that the deforested areas of the study area correlate with the LST rise spatially with a very high correlation (0.98) from which a tangible interaction of the parameters can be inferred.