Persian Medicine Network (PMN) Establishment

in the Universal Scientic Education and

Research Network (USERN)

Babak Daneshfard 1,2, Ebrahim Khadem 2,3

1 Chronic Respiratory Diseases Research Center, National Research Institute of Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases (NRITLD), Shahid

Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

2 Persian Medicine Network (PMN), Universal Scientic Education and Research Network (USERN), Tehran, Iran

3 Department of Persian Medicine, School of Persian Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

GMJ.2023;12:e3066

www.gmj.ir

 Correspondence to:

Babak Daneshfard, National Research Institute of Tu-

berculosis and Lung Diseases (NRITLD), Masih Dane-

shvari Hospital, Daar-Abad, Niavaran, Tehran, Iran.

Telephone Number: +98 (21) 27128867

Email Address: babakdaneshfard@gmail.com

Received 2023-05-27

Revised 2023-06-28

Accepted 2023-07-05

Dear Editor,

With the establishment of the Universal

Scientic Education and Research Net-

work (USERN), a new horizon appeared in

front of those who are exploring the science, of

course, “without border” [1]. Professor Nima

Rezaei, the rst president of USERN, found-

ed this organization in 2015. Its headquarter

oce is located in Children’s Medical Center,

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Teh-

ran, Iran. As an international organization, the

main objective of the USERN is to promote

ethical and professional scientic research

and education that serves the non-military

purpose of enhancing human life. It achieves

this goal by facilitating collaboration and re-

source-sharing among individuals, as well as

allocating resources to the most crucial ideas

that can bring about signicant improvements

[2].

Since that time, so many interest groups have

been formed in USERN enabling the re-

searchers to focus on various elds of science.

Meanwhile, the very “interdisciplinarity” and/

or “multidisciplinarity” nature of a majority

of these groups have been a brilliant charac-

teristic of this ever-growing global network.

Such a remarkable property could denitely

play an important role in the improvement of

innovative research activities.

Despite having a long-lasting history, it is

only a couple of decades that Persian Med-

icine (PM) has been introduced as a distinct

branch of complementary and alternative

medicine (CAM). Since 2008, Ph.D. courses

in Persian medicine and pharmacy have been

initiated for MDs and PharmDs in Iranian

medical universities. Of course, it was only

the beginning of a scientic movement toward

the evidence-based practice of PM. The recent

research and educational activities accompa-

nied with a dramatic increase in the scientic

publications in this eld resulted in the recog-

nition of PM as a distinct alternative/holistic

medical system in the international scientic

communities. According to a report published

in the “Journal of Ethnopharmacology” in

2020, Iran has been the 5’th most productive

country in the world regarding scientic pub-

lications in the eld of herbal medicines and

ethnopharmacology after China, India, Brazil,

and the United States during 2011–2018 [3].

This country has also the 4th rank in scien-

tic production in the eld of CAM in 2020

and 2021 based on the report of Scimago [4].

In line with these successes, Persian Medi-

cine has been included in the Medical Subject

Headings (MeSH) database of the national li-

brary of medicine (NLM) since 2022 [5].

All of these achievements have been obtained

only during the last two decades which shows

great promise of the brilliant future of PM.

Meanwhile, for keeping forward on this road

GMJ

This is an open-access article distributed

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Email:info@gmj.ir

Daneshfard B, et al. Persian Medicine Network (PMN) Establishment

2GMJ.2023;12:e3066

www.gmj.ir

of scientic improvement on one hand and

protecting the community against the mal-

practice of illegal opportunistic parties and

advocates of pseudoscientic beliefs on the

other, there is an undeniable need for expand-

ing the scientic impact of PM and increasing

the people’s awareness in the society. In this

regard, we have to team up at an international

level in order to enhance the quality and quan-

tity of the scientic evidence supporting the

rational practice of PM.

This network, namely Persian Medicine Net-

work (PMN), has been formed as an interest

group in USERN to be an umbrella for all of

the enthusiasts of PM. Its aim is to form a glob-

al “science without border” network attracting

all interests and potentials from various disci-

plines to research PM concepts (either basic

or clinical) in addition to educational activi-

ties. [GMJ.2023;12:e3066] DOI:10.31661/

gmj.v12i0.3066

Conict of Interest

None.

Keywords

Biomedical Research; Integrative Medicine;

Persian Medicine

References

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Aminorroaya A, Delavari F, Paryad-Zanjani

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go; 2022. Available from: https://www.

scimagojr.com/countryrank.php?catego-

ry=2707&area=2700&year=2021. Accessed

7/2022

5. National Library of Medicine. MeSH

Descriptor Data (Medicine, Persian). USA:

National Library of Medicine; 2022. Avail-

able from: https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/record/

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