Introduction: Findings suggest dissatisfaction of half of the cancer patients regarding pain and anxiety management. This study aimed to determine the effect of reflexology on the intensity of pain and anxiety among patients with metastatic cancer hospitalized in adult hematology ward.

After advances in experimental and clinical testing, minimal residual disease (MRD) assay results are considered a determining factor in treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia patients. According to MRD assay results, bone marrow (BM) leukemic burden and the rate of its decline after treatment can be directly evaluated. Detailed knowledge of the leukemic burden in BM can minimize toxicity and treatment complications in patients by tailoring the therapeutic dose based on patients' conditions. In addition, reduction of MRD before allo-HSCT is an important prerequisite for reception of transplant by the patient. In direct examination of MRD by morphological methods (even by a professional hematologist), leukemic cells can be under- or over-estimated due to similarity with hematopoietic precursor cells. As a result, considering the importance of MRD, it is necessary to use other methods including flow cytometry, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and RQ-PCR to detect MRD. Each of these methods has its own advantages and disadvantages in terms of accuracy and sensitivity. In this review article, different MRD assay methods and their sensitivity, correlation of MRD assay results with clinical symptoms of the patient as well as pitfalls in results of these methods are evaluated. In the final section, recent advances in MRD have been addressed.

Our findings showed that clonal rearrangements of IgH and TCRD (Vδ2-Dδ3 and Dδ2-Dδ3) genes had similar patterns to other studies. Frequency of TCRG (VγI and VγII) and IgK rearrangements was found to be slightly higher than previous reports. Among the IgK rearrangements, VKI (25%) was the most common.

This study was an experimental investigation on the effects of a new innovative approach to ELT/Education namely Competitive Team-Based Learning (CTBL), developed by Hosseini (2009, 2019) at Mashhad Rooyan Research Center in Iran, and Reciprocal Teaching of Reading (RTR), developed by Palinscar, at the University of Michigan and Brown (1985), at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, on the reading comprehension of Iranian EFL intermediate students. See the introductory 17-minute video to CTBL at https://youtu.be/cPtOUaIkJlk or at http://www.aparat.com/v/i32tK. After administering Interchange placement test to a total population of 75, and after ensuring that the participants were homogenous and at intermediate level, sixty students were selected, based on their scores in the pretest. Then, they were randomly assigned to two experimental groups – thirty per group. Each class was divided into seven teams of four – the two remaining students in each class worked in pairs. Before the experiment, the researchers conducted the Interchange reading test. In the course of experimentation, while the first experimental group was instructed via RTR method of CL, the second experimental group was instructed via Hosseini's approach to (language) teaching (i.e., CTBL). At the end of the study, the reading comprehension test (posttest) was used to assess the probable progress in the reading comprehension ability of the students. Independent samples T-test illustrated statistical significance at P≤0.05 level that proved the superiority of CTBL over RTR on the participants' reading comprehension achievements. Suggestions to researchers have been put forward at the end of the present article.

This study investigates PCR analysis of immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) and T cell receptor (TCR) gene rearrangements on paraffin-embedded tissue sections and bone marrow aspirates of patients suspected to have lymphoproliferative disorders but with inconclusive diagnosis in histopathological examination. 130 samples of patients with inconclusive immunohistochemistry results were evaluated for clonal rearrangement of IgH and TCR genes. Based on histopathology examination, the patients were divided into three groups: the first group without any definite diagnosis of lymphoproliferative disorders (60 cases, 46.2 %), the second group suspected to have a lymphoproliferative disorder but in favor of benign disorders (19 cases, 14.6 %) and the third group suspect to lymphoproliferative disorders but relatively in favor of malignant disorders (51 cases, 39.2 %). After DNA extraction and quality control, semi-nested PCR was performed using consensus primers for amplification of TCR-c and CDR-3 regions of IgH genes. PCR products were analyzed after heteroduplex analysis using polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and were subject to silver staining. Totally, in over half of the cases (55.4 %), a monoclonal pattern was found in IgH or TCR-c genes rearrangements. Monoclonal IgH gene rearrangement was detected in 48.1 % of patients, whereas monoclonal TCR-c gene rearrangement was found in 33.6 % of them, which was not statistically significant (P = 0.008). Only in 32 patients (24.6 %) were the results of TCR-c and IgH gene rearrangements consistent with respect to the presence (2.3 %) or absence (22.3 %) of monoclonality. Finally, PCR analysis of TCR-c and IgH gene rearrangements led to definite diagnosis in 105 patients (80.8 %), and only 25 cases (19.2 %) remained inconclusive. Our results emphasize the usefulness of gene rearrangement study in cases without a definite diagnosis in immunohistochemistry studies. Multiple PCR analysis results when combined with patient's clinical course and immunohistochemistry can lead to early diagnosis and subsequent therapy.