Journal of

---

Introduction:Despite advances in disease prevention and food materials technology, food – borne diseases are still a major problem in both developed and developing countries. Morever, meat plays a key role in transfer of bacteria, especially “Zoonotic” to humans. Therefore, we decided to investigate the outbreak of pathogenic bacteria such as Salmonella,Campylobacter, Yersinia and Aeromonas in red meat and chicken offered as packed and unpacked in areas under the authority of Tehran university of medical sciences . Methods: 630 samples including 315 raw chicken meat and 315 raw red meat samples were collected and tested for a period of one year from July, 2004 to August,2005. Samples were collected from shops selling packed meat and chicken as well as shops selling unpacked meat and chicken in different parts of the south of Tehran The methods used for the laboratory investigation were based on Iranian National Standard Procedure No. 2394. Results: Of the 630 samples of chicken and meat, 183 samples (29 %) were contaminated. 49.2 percent of the contaminated samples were chicken meat and 8.9 percent were red meat. From the total, 71 samples were contaminated with salmonella (11.3 %), 68 samples with Campylobacter (10.8 %), 26 samples with Yersinia entrocolitica (4.1 %) and 18 samples with Aeromonas (2.9 %). In red meat samples, microbial contamination was observed in 4.9 % of packed and 10.3 percent of unpacked samples. Contamination rate of chicken samples was higher including 59.3 % of packed and 45.7 % of unpacked chicken samples. The observed difference between the remitting samples of packed and unpacked chicken was statistically significant. (P< 0.05) Conclusion: Our results indicated that although the centers selling packed and unpacked red meat from south of Teheran showed different microbial contamination rate, the differences were statistically insignificant. (P> 0.05)

---

Introduction: Leukemia is a heterogeneous malignant disease in which progression at the level of CD34+ cells has a major impact in drug resistance and relapse. The multi-drug resistance gene product, P-glycoprotein is an inhibitor of apoptosis proteins (IAPs), such as Survivin that are expressed simultaneously with several putative drug resistance parameters in CD34+ leukemia cells. In fact, IAPs over-expression and their anti-apoptotic splice variants are associated with CD34 positivity, poor response to chemotherapy and reduced overall survival in leukemic patients. Recently, adenosine 5ʹ-triphosphate (ATP) has been reported to inhibit proliferation and induce apoptosis in several human cell lines. The K562 CD34+ human myeloid leukemia cell line has the unique feature of expressing significant functional IAPs and other drug-resistance genes. Thus, the efficacy of ATP in overcoming the resistance and expression profile of Survivin and its splice variants were examined in K562 cells in the present study. Methods: K562 cell were cultured and treated several times with different concentrations of ATP. Apoptosis was studied by fluorescent microscopy(Ao/EtBr double staining) and DNA fragmentation assay. The expression level of Survivin and its splice variants was studied by semiquantative RT-PCR method. Results: The results showed that over-expression of Survivin and its anti-apoptotic splice variant, 3b splice variant were decreased after treatment by ATP in a time- and dose-dependent manner. The expression levels of other splice variants (ΔEx3, 2b, 2α and 3α) did not show significant difference between the control and the treated cells. Conclusion: The results showed that ATP attenuated expression of Survivin and its anti-apoptotic splice variant, meaning that this nucleotide can facilitate apoptosis in drug-resistant leukemia cells. In addition, combination of ATP with standard chemotherapies may be utilized for inhibition of drug-resistance in leukemia cells.