Serum ferritin levels and irregular use of iron chelators predict liver iron load in patients with major beta thalassemia: a cross-sectional study

Aim To determine whether serum ferritin, liver transaminases, and regularity and type of iron chelation protocol can be used to predict liver iron load as assessed by T2* magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients with beta thalassemia major (TM). Methods This cross-sectional study, conducted from March 1, 2014 to March 1, 2015, involved 90 patients with beta TM on regular packed red blood cell transfusion. Liver and cardiac iron load were evaluated with T2* MRI. Compliance with iron-chelating agents, deferoxamine or deferasirox, and regularity of their use, as well as serum ferritin and liver transaminase levels were assessed.Results Patients with high serum ferritin were 2.068 times (95% confidence interval 1.26-3.37) more likely to have higher liver or cardiac iron load. High serum aspartate aminotransferases and irregular use of iron chelating agents, but not their type, predicted higher cardiac iron load. In a multiple regression model, serum ferritin level was the only significant predictor of liver and myocardial iron load. Conclusions Higher serum ferritin strongly predicted the severity of cardiac and liver iron load. Irregular use of chelator drugs was associated with a higher risk of cardiac and liver iron load, regardless of the type of chelating agent

Constructing Colloquial Dataset for Persian Sentiment Analysis of Social Microblogs

Introduction: Microblogging websites have massed rich data sources for sentiment analysis and opinion mining. In this regard, sentiment classification has frequently proven inefficient because microblog posts typically lack syntactically consistent terms and representatives since users on these social networks do not like to write lengthy statements. Also, there are some limitations to low-resource languages. The Persian language has exceptional characteristics and demands unique annotated data and models for the sentiment analysis task, which are distinctive from text features within the English dialect. Method: This paper first constructs a user opinion dataset called ITRC-Opinion by collaborative environment and insource way. Our dataset contains 60,000 informal and colloquial Persian texts from social microblogs such as Twitter and Instagram. Second, this study proposes a new deep convolutional neural network (CNN) model for more effective sentiment analysis of colloquial text in social microblog posts. The constructed datasets are used to evaluate the presented model. Furthermore, some models, such as LSTM, CNN-RNN, BiLSTM, and BiGRU with different word embeddings, including Fasttext, Glove, and Word2vec, investigated our dataset and evaluated the results. Results: The results demonstrate the benefit of our dataset and the proposed model (72% accuracy), displaying meaningful improvement in sentiment classification performance

Association of levels of interleukin 17 and T-helper 17 count with symptom severity and etiology of chronic heart failure: a case-control study

Aim To assess the association between the levels of interleukin 17 (IL-17) and T-helper 17 count and symptom severity and etiology of chronic heart failure. Methods This single-center prospective case-control study, conducted from December 1, 2015 to January 1, 2017 in Tehran Heart Center, evaluated gene expression of IL-17, relative count of (CD4+IL17+) Th17 cells and CD4+ helper T-cells in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of 42 patients with CHF and 42 matched controls. A multiple regression model assessed the predictors of peripheral IL-17 expression and Th17 count in patients with CHF. Results IL-17 expression was increased in patients with CHF, both at baseline and after stimulation. IL-17 and Th17 counts were higher in patients with advanced New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class (class IV) than in controls and patients with class I. Th17 cell population expanded in patients with CHF, more prominently in patients with class IV than in controls and patients with class I, regardless of the ischemic or non-ischemic CHF origin. Multiple regression model showed that NYHA was the only meaningful predictor of IL-17 levels and Th17 count. Conclusion We demonstrated the lymphocytic origin of IL-17 production in advanced CHF and the ability of disease severity to predict IL-17 levels

Adenoid Hyperplasia in a Patient With a Rare Type of Hyper Immunoglobulin M Syndrome Due to CD40 Deficiency

CD40 deficiency yield to an autosomal recessive subtype of hyper-immunoglobulin M syndrome (HGIM type 3), presenting with an almost identical clinical picture to X-linked CD40L deficiency (HIGM type 1) with profound T-cell dysfunction yielding to opportunistic infections as well as neutropenia, autoimmunity, and malignancy. We presented a girl with recurrent upper respiratory tract infections and lymphoid hyperplasia which was diagnosed with type 3 hyper IgM syndrome due to CD40 gene mutation. Otitis media with opportunistic germs and no evidence for an X-linked pattern of inheritance were diagnostic keys to type 3 hyper IgM syndrome in our patient

Risk factors contributing to the incidence and mortality of acute childhood poisoning in emergency department patients in Iran: a hospital-based casecontrol study

OBJECTIVES: Since poisoning is one of the most important preventable factors contributing to the hospitalization and death of children who present to emergency departments, this study was carried out to investigate the risk factors contributing to the incidence and mortality of acute childhood poisoning. METHODS: This hospital-based case-control study included 243 cases and 489 controls, drawn from daily admissions to the emergency departments of the included hospitals according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. RESULTS: Gastrointestinal poisoning was the most common poisoning type, found in 87.7 of subjects, and medications were the most common cause of poisoning (49.8). Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that a history of poisoning (odds ratio OR, 10.44; 95% confidence interval CI, 5.58 to 19.51; p<0.001) and the availability of poisonous substances (OR, 8.88; 95% CI, 5.41 to 14.56; p<0.001) were among the most important predictors of childhood poisoning. Respiratory poisoning (OR, 6.72; 95% CI, 1.40 to 32.07; p<0.05) and the presence of addiction in the family (OR, 4.54; 95% CI, 1.10 to 18.68; p<0.05) were the most important predictors of mortality among children with poisoning. CONCLUSIONS: Addiction and the presence of physical or psychological disorders in family members, a history of poisoning, and the availability of poisonous substances were significantly associated with the incidence of childhood poisoning and resultant mortality

Risk factors contributing to the incidence and mortality of acute childhood poisoning in emergency department patients in Iran: a hospital-based case-control study

OBJECTIVES Since poisoning is one of the most important preventable factors contributing to the hospitalization and death of children who present to emergency departments, this study was carried out to investigate the risk factors contributing to the incidence and mortality of acute childhood poisoning. METHODS This hospital-based case-control study included 243 cases and 489 controls, drawn from daily admissions to the emergency departments of the included hospitals according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. RESULTS Gastrointestinal poisoning was the most common poisoning type, found in 87.7% of subjects, and medications were the most common cause of poisoning (49.8%). Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that a history of poisoning (odds ratio [OR], 10.44; 95% confidence interval [CI], 5.58 to 19.51; p<0.001) and the availability of poisonous substances (OR, 8.88; 95% CI, 5.41 to 14.56; p<0.001) were among the most important predictors of childhood poisoning. Respiratory poisoning (OR, 6.72; 95% CI, 1.40 to 32.07; p<0.05) and the presence of addiction in the family (OR, 4.54; 95% CI, 1.10 to 18.68; p<0.05) were the most important predictors of mortality among children with poisoning. CONCLUSIONS Addiction and the presence of physical or psychological disorders in family members, a history of poisoning, and the availability of poisonous substances were significantly associated with the incidence of childhood poisoning and resultant mortality

Positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging methods and datasets within the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN)

The Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN) is an international collaboration studying autosomal dominant Alzheimer disease (ADAD). ADAD arises from mutations occurring in three genes. Offspring from ADAD families have a 50% chance of inheriting their familial mutation, so non-carrier siblings can be recruited for comparisons in case-control studies. The age of onset in ADAD is highly predictable within families, allowing researchers to estimate an individual\u27s point in the disease trajectory. These characteristics allow candidate AD biomarker measurements to be reliably mapped during the preclinical phase. Although ADAD represents a small proportion of AD cases, understanding neuroimaging-based changes that occur during the preclinical period may provide insight into early disease stages of \u27sporadic\u27 AD also. Additionally, this study provides rich data for research in healthy aging through inclusion of the non-carrier controls. Here we introduce the neuroimaging dataset collected and describe how this resource can be used by a range of researchers