Association between biochemical and hematologic factors with COVID-19 using data mining methods

Abstract Background and aim Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease that can spread very rapidly with important public health impacts. The prediction of the important factors related to the patient's infectious diseases is helpful to health care workers. The aim of this research was to select the critical feature of the relationship between demographic, biochemical, and hematological characteristics, in patients with and without COVID-19 infection. Method A total of 13,170 participants in the age range of 35–65 years were recruited. Decision Tree (DT), Logistic Regression (LR), and Bootstrap Forest (BF) techniques were fitted into data. Three models were considered in this study, in model I, the biochemical features, in model II, the hematological features, and in model II, both biochemical and homological features were studied. Results In Model I, the BF, DT, and LR algorithms identified creatine phosphokinase (CPK), blood urea nitrogen (BUN), fasting blood glucose (FBG), total bilirubin, body mass index (BMI), sex, and age, as important predictors for COVID-19. In Model II, our BF, DT, and LR algorithms identified BMI, sex, mean platelet volume (MPV), and age as important predictors. In Model III, our BF, DT, and LR algorithms identified CPK, BMI, MPV, BUN, FBG, sex, creatinine (Cr), age, and total bilirubin as important predictors. Conclusion The proposed BF, DT, and LR models appear to be able to predict and classify infected and non-infected people based on CPK, BUN, BMI, MPV, FBG, Sex, Cr, and Age which had a high association with COVID-19

THE COMPARISON BETWEEN THE EFFICACY OF HIGH DOSE ACYCLOVIR AND ERYTHROMYCIN ON THE PERIOD AND SIGNS OF PITIRIASIS ROSEA

<b>Background:</b> Pityriasis Rosea (PR) is an acute inflammatory and self-limiting skin disorder, sometimes with troublesome symptoms. To date, there are few treatments available for this disorder. <b>Aim:</b> Compare the traditional treatment with erythromycin to a newly introduced antiviral treatment acyclovir for PR. <b>Materials and Methods:</b> Patients with clinically confirmed diagnosis of PR, matching our exclusion criteria, were enrolled. They were randomized in two groups that received high-dose oral acyclovir or erythromycin. The participants were evaluated two, four, and eight weeks after commencement of the study and followed for one year. <b>Results:</b> A total of 30 patients including 15 males and 15 females completed the study. After eight weeks, 13 patients in the acyclovir group experienced complete response, while in the erythromycin group only six patients had complete response (<i>P</i> &lt; 0.05). Also, patients in the acyclovir group experienced faster resolution of pruritus in comparison with the erythromycin group (not significant). No adverse drug reaction was detected in both groups. <b>Conclusion:</b> It seemed that a high-dose of oral acyclovir was a safe and effective therapy for PR, although this remained to be confirmed in larger studies