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Background: Aimed to investigate in an animal model the efficacy of humic acid by showing its antioxidant and anti-apoptotic effect comparing with the histopathological and neurological outcomes for the hypoxic-ischemic brain injury., Methods: 28 Wistar-Albino rats who were on the 7th postnatal day and weighting between 9 and 19 g randomly divided into four groups with developed HIE model under the gas anesthesia. 20 mg/kg and 10 mg/kg intraperitoneal HA were given to Group I and II respectively. Saline was given to Group III and the sham group was Group IV. The brain tissues were stained with cresyl-violet histochemistry for grading neuronal cell injury and caspase immunohistochemistry., Results: The neuronal cell injury was statistically lower in all neuroanatomical lands in HA treatment groups. The degree of ischemia was significantly smaller in HA groups. Caspase-3 immunoreactivity was decreased in the HA groups compared with the saline group. When the groups were compared, there were no serious neuronal injury in Group I., Conclusions: This is the first study which investigates the role of HA in HIE model. HA reduces apoptosis and neuronal injury in cerebral tissue of the rats. This findings suggest that HA may be viable protective agent against HIE.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic and stressful disease, which significantly affects the quality of life (QoL) of patients. QoL instruments provide information which traditional outcome measures of MS do not. It is unclear if the longer disease-specific instruments provide more useful information than the shorter. We aimed to investigate whether there was any difference between general QoL instrument and MS-specific one on the basis of detecting the efficacy of pulse therapy. 112 clinically definite MS patients were included in the study. Patients enrolled in the study were in relapse period treated by 1 g/day methyl-prednisolone for 5 days. World Health Organization Quality of Life Brief Form, Turkish Version (WHOQoL-BREF-TR) was given as a generic measure and Multiple Sclerosis Quality of Life-54 (MSQoL-54) as an MS-specific measure to assess the QoL. The same scales were administered 1 month after the therapy. MSQoL-54 was correlated with the EDSS in the pre-treatment period but WHOQoL-BREF was not. On day 30, there was a significant increase in both WHOQoL-BREF and MSQoL-54 scores. Increase was more prominent in MSQoL-54. There was a weak correlation between WHOQoL-BREF and MSQoL-54 (r=0.17). Correlation between changes in WHOQoL-BREF and MSQoL-54 scores was even weaker (r=0.11). Correlation between WHOQoL-BREF and EDSS was weaker (r=0.13), and correlation between MSQoL-54 and EDSS was still moderate (r=0.46) when compared with day 0. We concluded that although it takes a longer time to administer, MSQoL-54, as a MS-specific QoL instrument, is favorable and reliable for detecting the QoL not only in the remission but also in the relapse period of MS. Our results also indicated that MS-specific measure of QoL might be used for detecting the treatment effects in relapse period of patients with MS.