Search

Objective: A year after the emergence of a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), as a new crisis in respiratory infections, there remain many uncertainties and unknowns about SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it causes, called coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Although COVID-19 is known as a respiratory disease, some atypical manifestations have been seen, different from those seen in other types of viral respiratory infections. This paper aims to describe designing, launching, and implementing a data collection system for all respiratory diseases, with a focus on SARS-CoV-2 from the onset of this pandemic. Method: The current registry is designed in compliance with the standard Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guidelines, along with the declaration of Helsinki principles. Results: A respiratory disease registry, with an emphasis on COVID-19 and other co-infections, was developed. Data consisted of demographic, clinical, and supporting information about SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viral diseases. Conclusion: It is hoped that the current data registry will facilitate patient evaluation and improve the outcomes of cases of respiratory infection defined by a particular condition, disease, or exposure. Moreover, the registry can harmonize data about the treatment, outcomes, and well-being of patients who receive care over time, and identify best practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A life-threatening respiratory disease, coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), has spread across the globe since December 2019. Many prognostic factors have already been put forward to predict the risk of death and other outcomes. The current study is evaluating the survival rate between hypertensive and non-hypertensive infected patients. Patients who were included in this study were admitted between 20 February to 1 March 2020 in Fars (southwest of Iran) province hospitals. Data were collected from the electronic base registry which contained demographic information, medical symptoms, and signs, underlying diseases, CT scan results, and final outcome. Of all 1239 positive cases, 159 (12.83%) had known with hypertension ant this group was significantly older than non-hypertensive patients (66.1 years Vs 48.95 years, p <.001). According to Kaplan–Meier survival curve and log-rank test, it was seen hypertensive patients deteriorated more rapidly than non-hypertensive group (p =.032). Moreover, HIV, cardiovascular, and kidney disease were diagnosed as factors that increase the risk of death in hypertensive patients. The current study about the survival rate of COVID-19 patients had shown hypertensive patents are in danger of disease severity, although it may be related to their age. Moreover, the probability of other complications like diabetes, smoking, asthma, kidney, and cardiovascular diseases, and either some other infections such as HIV can make the condition complicated and need more consideration to prevent noxious outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergence of a new coronavirus causes a serious concern whether this can be stopped at all. The ongoing coronavirus disease created a substantial variation in the fatality rate over the world. The current report brought an explore about the epidemiological characteristics of deceased patients and the fatality rate after the first peak in Fars province which is the fourth most populous and large province in Iran. Of the 3702 confirmed cases with coVID-19, 87 patients passed away and so the fatality rate estimated 2.35. Also, it was derived that male sex, old age and underlying diseases especially diabetes were common characteristics of these victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, the effects of heat treatment are studied on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the explosive bonding of 304 stainless steel plates and CK45 carbon steel with a constant explosive load and various standoff distances. The samples are heat treated in a furnace for 2-h and 4-h at 250℃ and 350℃. The results imply that by increasing the standoff distance from 4 to 5 mm, the impact kinetic energy increases and severe plastic deformation occurs in the bonding interface. The metallography results indicate the wave-vortex nature of the interface with the increase of standoff distance. In addition, heat treatment for 2 h at 350℃ leads to an increase in the thicknesses of intermetallic compounds in the interface. Also, the hardness decreases from 271 to 171 Vickers, and from 279 to 195 Vickers with 2 h of heat treatment at 350℃ in samples with standoff distances of 4 and 5 mm, respectively. Furthermore, the strengths of the samples decrease from 449 to 371 MPa, and from 510 to 433 MPa, respectively. Hardness and strength changes occur due to changes in the thickness of the intermetallic area and an increase in grain sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Road extraction from digital images is of fundamental importance in the context of automatic mapping, effective urban planning and updating GIS databases. Very high spatial resolution (VHR) imagery acquired by airborne and space borne sensors is the main source for accurate road extraction. Manual techniques are fading away as they are time consuming and costly. Hence, road extraction method that is significantly more automated has become a research hotspot in remote sensing information processing. This paper proposes a semi-automatic approach to extract different road types from high-resolution remote sensing images. The approach is based on edge detection and SVM and mathematical morphology method. First the outline of the road is detected based on Canny operator. Then, Full Lambda Schedule merging method combines adjacent segments. Then the entire image was classified using Support Vector Machine (SVM) and various spatial, spectral, and texture attributes to form a road image. Finally, the quality of detected roads is improved using morphological operators. The algorithm was systematically evaluated on a variety of satellite images from Worldview, QuickBird and UltraCam airborne Images. The results of the accuracy evaluation demonstrate that the proposed road extraction approach can provide high accuracy for extraction of different road types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Introduction of therapeutic genes into the injured site of nervous system can be achieved using transplantation of cellular vehicles containing desired gene. To transfer exogenous genes into the cellular vehicles, lentiviral vectors are one of interested vectors because of advantages such high transduction efficiency of dividing and non-dividing cells. Unrestricted somatic stem cells are subclasses of umbilical cord blood derived stem cells which are appreciate candidates to use as cellular vehicles for ex vivo gene therapy of nervous system. Objectives: In current study we investigated the effect of lentiviral vector transduction on the neuronal related features of unrestricted somatic stem cells to indicate the probable and unwanted changes related to transduction procedure. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, lentiviral vector containing green fluorescent protein (GFP) were transduced into unrestricted somatic stem cells and its effect was investigated with using MTT assay, qPCR and immunohistochemistry techniques. For statistical comparison of real time PCR results, REST software (2009, Qiagen) was used. Results: Obtained results showed lentiviral vector transduction did not have cytotoxic effects on unrestricted somatic stem cells and did not change neuronal differentiation capacity of them as well the expression of some neuronal related genes and preserved them in multilineage situation. Conclusions: In conclusion, we suggested that lentiviral vectors could be proper vectors to transfer therapeutic gene into unrestricted somatic stem cells to provide a cellular vehicle for ex vivo gene therapy of nervous system disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable management of orchard fields requires detailed information about the tree types, which is a main component of precision agriculture programs. To this end, hyperspectral imagery can play a major role in orchard tree species mapping. Efficient use of hyperspectral data in combination with field measurements requires the development of optimized band selection strategies to separate tree species. In this study, field spectroscopy (350 to 2500 nm) was performed through scanning 165 spectral leaf samples of dominant orchard tree species (almond, walnut, and grape) in Chaharmahal va Bakhtiyari province, Iran. Two multivariable methods were employed to identify the optimum wavelengths: the first includes three-step approach ANOVA, random forest classifier (RFC) and principal component analysis (PCA), and the second employs partial least squares (PLS). For both methods we determined whether tree species can be spectrally separated using discriminant analysis (DA) and then the optimal wavelengths were identified for this purpose. Results indicate that all species express distinct spectral behaviors at the beginning of the visible range (from 350 to 439 nm), the red edge and the near infrared wavelengths (from 701 to 1405 nm). The ANOVA test was able to reduce primary wavelengths (2151) to 792, which had a significant difference (99% confidence level), then the RFC further reduced the wavelengths to 118. By removing the overlapping wavelengths, the PCA represented five components (99.87% of variance) which extracted optimal wavelengths were: 363, 423, 721, 1064, and 1388 nm. The optimal wavelengths for the species discrimination using the best PLS-DA model (100% accuracy) were at 397, 515, 647, 1386, and 1919 nm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Influenza is one of the most important viral diseases with high mortality and morbidity that can have a great impact on public health and economy. Objective: To investigate the clinical and epidemiological features of influenza virus A/H1N1, A/H3N2, and B infection in Fars province, southern Iran, in 2015-2019. Methods: In this retrospective cross-sectional study, we assessed the archived data of Syndromic Surveillance System of Iran's Health Ministry, allowed access by Communicable Diseases' Unit of Health chancellor of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, from December 22, 2015 to September 22, 2019. The participants included all patients whose data were recorded as influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infections/illness (SARI). Influenza viral infection was confirmed by reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Results: Totally, 1269 patients suspected of influenza were sampled. The mean ± SD of age was 29.40 ± 26.91 years. Fever was the most common symptom (68.6%). The highest incidence was in winter (55.9%). Of 928/1269 laboratory's results which were recorded in the registry, 204 (16.08%) samples were positive and 724 (57.05%) were negative. Among 204 positive results, 191 (15.05%) were influenza type A, and 8 (0.63%) influenza type B. Among patients with definite influenza type A, 34 (2.68%) had H1N1/p subtype, 58 (4.57%) H3N2, and one (0.08%) had other subtypes; however, subtypes were not identified in 7.72% of patients. Six (3.0%) patients with confirmed influenza expired. Conclusion: The incidence of influenza, especially type A, in Fars province, southern Iran is considerable and requires more attention for prevention in health policy programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vaccines are undeniably an important tool for controlling infectious disease outbreaks, and they are the most certain way to end the epidemic risk. This brief report describes the characteristics of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) deaths among breakthrough and unvaccinated cases hospitalized in Fars province in the south of Iran. This cross-sectional study was performed to compare breakthrough and unvaccinated death cases in Fars, Iran (February 2, to August 19, 2021). Among 444,728 fully vaccinated people, 60,800 breakthrough cases were detected. Thus, 501 died, of which 297 (297/501) cases were hospitalized and compared with the unvaccinated dead group. The median age for breakthrough and unvaccinated cases was estimated 79 and 65 y, respectively. All signs and symptoms of COVID-19 were more frequent in the unvaccinated group. Decreasing O 2 saturation (less than 93%) happened more often in the unvaccinated group significantly. Unvaccinated dead patients had significantly shorter hospital stays. These patients received 66.63% Sinopharm, 0.67% Sputnik, 0.67% COVIran Barekat, and 31.99% AstraZeneca vaccines. None of them were health-care staff. Equitable access to safe and effective vaccines is critical to ending the COVID-19 pandemic. As vaccine uptake increases, we observed a decrease in mortality and protection from severe forms of the disease.

Background: Identifying effective biomarkers plays a critical role on screening; rapid diagnosis; proper managements and therapeutic options, which is helpful in preventing serious complications. The present study aimed to compare the liver laboratory tests between alive and dead hospitalized cases for prediction and proper management of the patients., Methods: This retrospective, cross sectional study consists of all deceased patients admitted in one center in Shiraz, Iran during 19 Feb 2020 to 22 Aug 2021. For further comparison, we selected a 1:2 ratios alive group randomly., Results: Overall, 875 hospitalized cases died due to COVID-19. We selected 1750 alive group randomly. The median age was significantly higher in died group (65.96 vs 51.20). Regarding the laboratory findings during the hospitalization ALT, AST, Bili.D were significantly higher in non-survivors than survivors but Albumin was less in deceased patients. It was revealed elevated levels of Albumin, AST, Bili.T and Bili.D were associated with increasing the risk of in hospital death. Moreover, the predictive effect of ALP and Bili.D had significantly more than others with high sensitivity and specify., Conclusion: We found patients with COVID-19 have reduced serum albumin level, and increase ALT and AST. The current results revealed abnormal liver chemistries is associated with poor outcome, which highlighted the importance of monitoring these patients more carefully and should be given more caution., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests., (Copyright © 2022 Emami et al. Published by Tehran University of Medical Sciences.)