The Effectiveness of Interpersonal Psychotherapy on Alexithymia, Emotion Regulation, and Psychological Capital of Male Substance Abusers Treated by Addiction Treatment Centers in Kerman.

Background: Addiction is a psychiatric disorder with biological, psychological, and social aspects. Literatures indicated that alexithymia, emotional dysregulation, and low psychological capital affect substance abuse. This study investigated the effectiveness of interpersonal psychotherapy on alexithymia, emotional regulation, and psychological capital of male substance abusers. Methods: This quasi-experimental study was conducted in 2021 in Kerman, Iran using a pretest, post-test design with a control group. A single therapy center was randomly selected via the multi-stage cluster method from several substance abuse treatment centers. 50 people were randomly selected and allocated to experimental and control groups. The research instruments were questionnaires for alexithymia, emotional regulation, and psychological capital. After the pretest phase, the experimental group underwent 12 sessions of interpersonal psychotherapy. In the next step, the post-test was conducted and after 6 weeks the follow-up test was performed on the groups. The control group did not receive the treatment. Finally, the data obtained from 40 participants were analyzed using the MANCOVA test by SPSS25 statistical software. Findings: Our findings indicated significant MANCOVA results for alexithymia (F=65.14 and P<0.05), emotion regulation (F=44.72 and P<0.05) and psychological capital (F=12.05 and P<0.05) showing a significant difference between the scores of dependent variables in the experimental group and control group. Conclusion: The results showed that interpersonal psychotherapy improves the state of alexithymia, emotional regulation, and psychological capital in substance abusers. It can also be used as an effective intervention in addiction treatment centers.

Evaluation of methanol content of illegal beverages using GC and an easier modified Chromotropic acid method; a cross sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Methanol is highly toxic to human beings and naturally exists in some beverages. Having access to an easy and cheap method for its determination is of great importance to increase the safety of use of these beverages. Our main aim is to evaluate methanol concentration of some alcoholic beverages in Iran black market and compare it with the European and US standards. Also, we evaluated the efficacy of a newly designed and produced chemical kit in determining the risk of methanol toxicity by drinking of such samples compared to gas chromatography method. METHODS: Methanol content of suspected alcoholic beverages referred to forensic toxicology laboratory, Guilan province, Iran was measured using gas chromatography and a recently designed kit based on modified colorimetric chromotropic acid method. RESULTS: Of 1221 samples, 145 (11.9%) had no ethanol content, while in three samples (0.25%), methanol was high enough (700,000; 870,000; 920,000 mg/L) to cause severe methanol toxicity. Median [IQR] ethanol content of the suspected samples was 9% [3.7, 32.75]. Methanol was detected in 128 (10.48%) samples using gas chromatography method and 160 samples (13.1%) with designed kit with 100% sensitivity, 97.07% specificity, and 100% negative-predictive-value. CONCLUSIONS: Alcoholic beverages produced in local black market in Iran are not safe at all. The application of the new method is practical, rapid, easy, and accurate to evaluate the risk of methanol toxicity in suspected alcoholic drinks.

Diagnostic value of 99mTc-ubiquicidin scintigraphy for osteomyelitis and comparisons with 99mTc-methylene diphosphonate scintigraphy and magnetic resonance imaging.

OBJECTIVE: The discrimination of bacterial infections from sterile inflammatory processes is of great importance in the management of inflammation. Currently available techniques cannot decisively address this issue. In this respect, antimicrobial peptide Tc-ubiquicidin (UBI) 29-41 scans have been showing interesting results. The aim of this study was to determine the accuracy of Tc-UBI scan in the detection of osteomyelitis and to compare it with Tc-methylene diphosphonate scan and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). METHODS: Twenty patients (mean age=48.90 years) with suspected osteomyelitis were included in this study. After evaluation of each patient through history taking, physical examination, appropriate laboratory tests, and other processes including bone probing, wound culture, and plain film radiography, MRIs, Tc-UBI scans, and Tc-methylene diphosphonate scans were performed. For quantitative analysis, the mean count of abnormal-to-normal (A/N) region was calculated for images acquired at 15, 30, 45, 60, 120, and 240 min to obtain the most favorable time for imaging. RESULTS: In total, osteomyelitis was detected in the Tc-UBI scans of 17 patients, indicating 100% accuracy, compared with an accuracy of 90% for osteomyelitis detected in three-phase bone scans. The maximum mean A/N was observed at 15 min after intravenous injection (median: 1.91; interquartile range: 1.54-2.94). MRI was performed in 12 cases only with 75% accuracy. In addition, the A/N ratios for the Tc-UBI scans were not significantly different between patients with or without Staphylococcus aureus growth on wound cultures. CONCLUSION: For fast imaging with high accuracy, Tc-UBI 29-41 is a suitable choice for the detection of osteomyelitis.

One-year prognosis of patients with normal myocardial perfusion imaging using technitium-99m sestamibi in suspected coronary artery disease: a single-center experience of 1,047 patients.

INTRODUCTION: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the clinical outcome of a normal stress technetium-99m (99mTc)-Sestamibi single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) with different probabilities of coronary artery disease (CAD). MATERIAL AND METHODS: A total of 1,047 subjects with a normal 99mTc-MIBI SPECT were followed up for one year and hard and soft cardiac events were assessed. Hard cardiac events were defined as cardiac death or non-fatal myocardial infarction (MI). Soft cardiac events included the patient's development of recurrent chest pain requiring coronary revascularization or significant stenosis in coronary arteries on angiography. RESULTS: Overall, 1,047 patients (248 men and 799 women; mean age: 60.07 ± 12.31, range 29-92) were enrolled. Three hard cardiac events occurred in the groups; two had cardiac arrest and one non-fatal MI. As a result, the annualized hard cardiac event rate was 0.28%, the annualized cardiac mortality rate was 0.19%, and the rate of overall annualized cardiac events was 1.25%. Furthermore, there was a significant difference in cardiac events among patients with various pretest likelihoods of CAD (p value=0.04). CONCLUSION: Our data confirmed that patients with a normal 99mTc-Sestamibi myocardial SPECT are associated with a very low incidence of cardiovascular events.