People in this area have a strong belief that plants have a positive impact in the treatment of respiratory disorders and they have used medicinal plants since ancient times to treat these disorders. Our study revealed the importance of herbal medicines and traditional medicine in this area as medicinal resource for drug discovery in future.

Resveratrol, a phytoalexin polyphenol, has antiproliferative, antiangiogenic, antiinflammatory, and antioxidant properties. The present study has assessed the effect of resveratrol treatment on the expression of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) in endometrial stromal cells (ESCs) from women with and without endometriosis. Endometrial tissues were obtained from 40 endometriotic patients and 15 nonendometriotic control women. After the enzymatic digestion, 13 eutopic ESCs (EuESCs), 8 ectopic ESCs (EESCs), and 11 control ESCs (CESCs) were treated with resveratrol (100 μM) for 6, 24, and 48 hr. The gene and protein expressions of IGF-1 and HGF were measured using real-time polymerase chain reaction and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay methods, respectively.Results showed that resveratrol treatment decreased significantly the gene expression of IGF-1 and HGF in EuESCs, EESCs, and CESCs (p < 0.05). The effect of resveratrol treatment on the reduction of IGF-1 gene expression was statistically more noticeable in EESCs compared with CESCs (p < 0.05). Also, in the case of HGF gene expression, the reducing effect of resveratrol treatment was statistically more considerable in EESCs compared with EuESCs and CESCs (p < 0.05 and p < 0.01, respectively). The IGF-1 and HGF protein production decreased significantly in EuESCs and EESCs (p < 0.05) but not in CESCs. These findings suggest that resveratrol treatment could reduce the expression of IGF-1 and HGF in ESCs especially in EESCs, which play a pivotal role in disease progression.

Palliative care is the science of promoting the patient's quality of life. It can improve the quality of life of a patient, which is effective not only in patient's late-life but also useful in dealing with a chronic illness over many years. In this regard, nurses, as the largest providers of health care services, play an important role in palliative care.Objective: This study aimed to investigate the palliative care knowledge of nurses and its contributing factors. Materials and Methods:This cross-sectional study was conducted on 280 nurses working in different departments of hospitals affiliated to Guilan University of Medical Sciences (GUMS). They were recruited using the stratified random sampling technique. Their data were collected by a demographic form and the Palliative Care Quiz for Nursing (PCQN) instrument. The collected data were analyzed by Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests. Results:The Mean±SD score of palliative care knowledge of study nurses was reported as 7.86±2.16 indicating their imperfect knowledge. Among studied factors, only the personal study about palliative care had a significant association with the nurses' knowledge (P=0.038). Conclusion:Nurses had poor knowledge of palliative care and its subscales that is one of the main obstacles in providing optimal palliative care. So, increasing their quality of palliative care services by improving their knowledge through in-service education and on the job retraining could promote the quality of palliative care services for the patients.

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