Context:Previous studies have suggested subtle anatomical brain differences between patients with schizophrenia and healthy control subjects. However, the results are inconsistent and there is no study investigating the various subtypes of this mental disorder separately.Aim:This study was conducted to compare the rate of absence of adhesio interthalamica (AI), a midline brain structure, between 3 subtypes of schizophrenia (paranoid, undifferentiated, and residual) and healthy control group, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).Materials and Methods:A total of 29 schizophrenia patients (21 men, 8 women) of three subtypes (paranoid, undifferentiated, and residual) were compared with 29 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. All subjects underwent 3-D brain MRI of full coronal series, 1.5-mm slices without interslice gaps. If the grey matter band connecting the thalami could not be identified on two or more coronal adjacent slices, the AI was considered as absent. The results were statistically analyzed.Results:The incidence rate of AI absence in patients with heterogenous subtypes of schizophrenia was was similar to control group, even when patients and controls of each gender were compared separately (P>0.05). In residual subtype, patients showed a significant priority in AI absence in comparison with the control group (P=0.041), which was not seen in paranoid and undifferentiated subtypes (P>0.05).Conclusion:Residual subtype of schizophrenia is associated with higher rate of AI absence in this study. Subsequent studies are required to determine if the absence of AI is a cause of residual schizophrenia or an effect.

Introduction: Chronic inflammations including infectious disorders such as HIV infection are now considered as risk factors for atherosclerosis. In this study, conducted for the first time on human subjects, human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) infection was examined as a potential risk factor for atherosclerosis. Materials and Methods: This is a matched-pair cross-sectional study on 58 HTLV-1-infected cases and 55 healthy control subjects. The subjects did not have any major cerebrovascular risk factors. Carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) was measured for each patient using the standard protocol of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study. Results: The mean age of the subjects was 42.9 ± 10.52 years, and males made up 33% of the population. The difference between the mean IMT of the infected case group and that of the healthy control group was significant (p < 0.05). Discussion: This study indicated that the HTLV-infected individuals showed a greater carotid IMT than the age- and sex-matched control subjects.Observing no other known risk factor for atherosclerosis, we concluded that this significant difference in IMT might support the hypothesis that HTLV-1 infection is an independent risk factor for atherogenesis.

Background: Heat shock protein 27 (HSP27) is an intracellular chaperone constitutively expressed in many cell types including cardio myocytes and endothelial cells. Circulating levels of HSP27 and anti-HSP27 antibody are higher in patients with CVD. Anti-HSP27 antibody concentrations were also reported to be increased in atherogenesis. We aimed to evaluate serum anti-HSP27 antibody titers in individuals with, or without, MetS in the MASHAD study cohort with large sample size in 6,568 subjects. Methods: Participants with MetS were identified from MASHAD cohort (n=3358) using the IDF criteria, and the control group were those individuals who did not meet these criteria (n=3210). In-house enzyme-linked immune sorbent assay (ELISA) method was used for measuring Anti-HSP27 antibody levels. The two groups were matched for age, sex and smoking habit. Results: As expected, there were significant differences in height (p= 0.004), waist and hip circumference, weight, BMI, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, TGs, TC, HDL-C, Hs-CRP, glucose, with the presence of diabetes mellitus, hypertension, hyperlipidemia (p<0.001) between the two groups. Serum HSP27 antibody titers did not show significant difference between the groups with and without metabolic syndrome (p= 0.740). Conclusion: In conclusion, our results revealed serum anti-HSP27 antibody titers were not statistically different between individuals with and without MetS. However, it is possible that drug treatment may affect antibody titers and confound our findings in this population sample..

This study revealed that there was no significant association between LXRα polymorphisms and the presence of obesity in an Iranian population and suggests that these two SNPs are not major contributors to obesity risk in this population.

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