Background: It appears that ivermectin can potentially act against COVID-19 infection. Today, it is an urgent need to evaluate the efficacy and safety of ivermectin. The effect of ivermectin therapy on mild to severe COVID-19 patients was investigated.Methods: A 45-days randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter, phase 2 clinical trial was designed at five hospitals. A total number of 180 mild to severe hospitalized patients with confirmed PCR and chest image tests were enrolled. The radiographic findings, hospitalization and low O2 saturation duration, and clinical outcomes such as mortality and variables of blood samples were analyzed using standard statistical analyses in SPSS (V20).Results: Average age of the participants was 56 years (45-67) and 50% were women. The primary and secondary results showed significant changes between day zero and day five of admission (∆ 0/5) in terms of ΔALC5/0, ΔPLT5/0, ΔESR5/0, ΔCRP5/0, duration of low O2 saturation, and duration of hospitalization (CI = 95% ). Risk of mortality was also decreased significantly in the study groups.Conclusion: Ivermectin as an adjunct reduced the rate of mortality, low O2 duration, and duration of hospitalization in adult COVID 19 patients. The improvement of other clinical parameters showed that the ivermectin, with a wide margin of safety, had a high therapeutic effect on COVID-19.Trial Registration: This trial was registered with the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials website (registration ID IRCT20200408046987N1).

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Aim: The aim of this study is the predictive validation of red cell distribution width (RDW) in COVID-19 patients. Method: In total, 331 COVID-19 patients were classified as ‘severe’ and ‘nonsevere’ groups based on the WHO standard criteria. The levels of RDW standard deviation (SD) were evaluated as both continuous and categorical variables. Multivariate statistical analyses were used. Results: RDW-SD ≤43 and ≤47 fl thresholds showed high specificity (90.1–91.4%) for diagnosing nonsevere illness and no risk of death. RDW-SD >47 indicated severe illness and a high mortality risk while 43<RDW-SD≤47 indicated severe illness with low risk of death. Conclusion: RDW-SD levels may be a potent independent predictor of the infection severity and mortality probability in COVID-19 patients.

The results suggest a possible role for oxidative stress and the altered expression of integrins in the pathology of CsA-induced gingival overgrowth.

Introduction. The primary objective of our study was to determine the nature of medication beliefs and their association with adherence to antiseizure medications (ASMs) among elderly epilepsy patients. Our secondary objective was to enhance the psychometric properties and factor structure parameters of the Beliefs about Medications Questionnaire (BMQ) adapted to epilepsy and affected aged subjects. Methods. A population-based survey was performed in which older adults (≥60 years of age) were invited for a free face-to-face consultation with the specialists as well as for the collection of necessary data. The eligible subjects were those who are affected with epilepsy and having epileptic seizures of any type. In addition, the participants were required to be of any sex, currently under treatment with ASMs, resident of Tehran, and able and interested to participate independently. All were carefully examined with a reasonably detailed case-history examination. Two Persian questionnaires used were Medication Adherence Rating Scale (MARS) and BMQ. Those with a MARS score of ≥6 were considered as adherent to ASMs. All data were described in descriptive terms. We did a group comparison of means and proportions for all possible independent variables between adherents and nonadherents. Then, we did a hierarchical multiple linear regression. For this, independent variables were categorized into three different blocks: (a) sociodemographic block (Block-1), (b) treatment side-effect block (Block-2), and (c) BMQ block that included ten items of the BMQ scale (Block-3). We also did a forward step-wise linear regression by beginning with an empty model. We also estimated the psychometric properties and factor structure parameters of BMQ and its two subdomains. Results. Of all (N = 123, mean age: 63.3 years, 74.0% males), 78.0% were adherent (mean score: 7.0, 95% CI 6.2–7.8) to ASMs. The MARS scores were not different between males and females. The mean BMQ score was 23.4 (95% CI 19.8–27.0) with the mean need score of 20.0 (95% CI 18.0–22.0) and mean concern score of 16.5 (95% CI 14.3–18.7). A positive need-concern differential was 20.4%. Upon hierarchical regression, the adjusted R2 for Block-1 was 33.8%, and it was 53.8% for Block-2 and 92.2% for Block-3. Upon forward step-wise linear regression, we found that “ASMs disrupt my life” (ß −1.9, ES = −1.1, p = 0.008 ) as the only belief associated with adherence. The alpha coefficient of BMQ was 0.81. Conclusions. Ours is one of the very few studies that evaluated medication beliefs and their association with adherence to ASMs among elderly epilepsy patients in a non-western context. In our context, medication beliefs are likely to have an independent role in effecting adherence to ASMs, particularly the concern that “ASMs disrupt life.” Treating physicians should cultivate good conscience about ASMs and evaluate the patient’s medication beliefs early-on to identify those who might be at the risk of becoming nonadherent.