Thyroid hormones (THs) are essential for growth and development of the kidney. Also TH influences glomerular filtration and tubular functions. Hypothyroidism negative influences kidney function indirectly by affecting the cardiovascular system and the renal blood flow, and directly by affecting glomerular filtration, tubular functions and the structure of the kidney. The purpose of this study was to evaluate changes in biochemical markers, oxidative stress parameter and histological changes in kidney of hypothyroid rats before and after treatment with folic acid. Hypothyroidism was induced for 6 weeks by the administration of propylthiouracil in drinking water. Urea and creatinine were measured to evaluate the changes in kidney function. Also malondialdehyde, nitrite, nitrate and other oxidative stress parameter were measured in serum and kidney tissue as indicators of oxidative damage. Kidney function and oxidative stress parameters in hypothyroid rats were significantly changed compared to those in control rats. Treatment with folic acid helps in improving the adverse effect of hypothyroidism; the histological study also confirms this finding.

The current study aimed to investigate the effects of thymoquinone (TQ) to enhance the anti-diabetic effect of metformin (MET) in streptozotocin-induced diabetes in male rats. The mutual effect of TQ and MET on biochemical parameters such as glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides, and glycated hemoglobin was estimated. Also, their combined influence on malonaldehyde (MDA) and total anti-oxidant capacity (TAC) in liver and pancreas tissues homogenates were assessed. Furthermore, their synergistic effects on the expression of mRNA encoding glucose transporter-2 (Glut-2) were evaluated. Moreover, insulin receptor labeling index percentage in liver tissues was estimated. Results revealed that the alteration in biochemical levels due to streptozotocin action was corrected and restored by TQ plus MET with more pronounced effect than MET alone. Also, in liver homogenate both TQ and MET decreased the elevated MDA level to 8.82 and augmented the TAC level to 2.71, compared to their values in MET group 14.64 and 1.19, respectively. Furthermore, TQ plus MET up-regulated the expression level of Glut-2 by 88.2%, compared to 80% in MET group. Taken together, our study revealed that TQ via its anti-oxidant properties is a useful combination therapeutic agent to enhance the anti-diabetic activity of MET in STZ-induced diabetic rats.

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Abstract:In Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), the dense sensor nodes deployment in the sensing field can be exploited in conserving the energy of the whole network, where the data of these nodes can be highly correlated. Therefore, it is necessary to turn off the unnecessary nodes that sense similar sensor readings so as to reduce the redundant sensed readings and decrease the communication overhead thus extend the WSN lifetime. This article suggests a Sensor Activity Scheduling (SAS) protocol for lifetime improvement of WSNs. SAS works in a periodic way. It exploits the spatial correlation among sensed sensor data in order to produce the best sensor activities schedule in WSNs. SAS composed of three phases: data collection, decision-based optimization, and sensing. SAS measures the similarity degree among the sensed data that collected in the first phase. It makes a decision of which sensors stay active during the sensing phase in each period and put the other nodes into low power sleep whilst keeping a good accuracy level to the received data at the sink to conserve the power and enhance the lifetime of the WSN. Several experiments based on real sensed data and by using OMNeT++ simulator demonstrate that SAS can save energy and extend the WSN lifetime efficiently compared with the other methods.