Prevalence of Cryptosporidium Species in Children Referred to Central and Hospital Laboratories of Zabol City, South East of Iran

Background Cryptosporidiosis has a worldwide distribution, and is the commonest cause of diarrhea in children and immune compromised individuals. Since there is no data available on the prevalence of Cryptosporidium species (sp.) in Zabol city, thus this study was carried out to assess the disease prevalence and related factors influencing the disease. Materials and Methods In this cross-sectional study, 200 fecal specimens were collected from children referred to the Central or hospital labs in Zabol city, South East of Iran, during April 2014 to August 2016. Fecal examination was performed by staining with Ziel-Neelsen acid-fast to find oocysts of the parasite. The children were grouped according to the age, gender, kind of water supplies, and diarrheic and non-diarrheic condition. Data were evaluated using SPSS version 13.0 software. Results Among the children referred to the Central laboratory, 200 fecal samples from different age groups were collected. The prevalence of Cryptosporidium species was 9.7% which was higher in children under 4 years. There was a significant relationship between sources of water supply and diarrheic children infected with Cryptosporidium (

Validation of a tool for predicting Iranian engineering student success in elearning

E-learning systems are developing tremendously all over the world. More than one thousand institute have been accepted this method of teaching and learning parallel with their conventional system. In this rapid development phase, institute encountered with some problem of early attrition, withdraw, failure and dropout. So increasing e-learner success rate is one of the main and common concerns of all e-leaning centers .Although considering technological, infrastructural, content related, teacher and support system factors are undoubtedly very important in this regard, but it is believed that e-learner related factors has also a critical role. The goal of this study is developing and validation of a tools to predict e-learner's success rate. Instrument such as Online Distance Learner Survey (ODLS),Test of Online Learning Success(TOOLS), Tertiary Students’ Readiness for Online Learning(TSROL) were reviewed in the literature. To achieve the goal of the study, all item of the pre mentioned instrument were analyzed. Then a questioner is developed according to the literature and authors experience in IUST e-learning centre. In this step some subscales and items that are not important for e-learner success removed from scale. The initial scale is constructed with 67 items. In the next step 290 e-learners from IUST e-learning center have been selected randomly and asked to describe themselves in reference to a 5-point Likert-type scale, with anchors ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation where used to study constructs validity of the before mentioned tool. The result revealed that eleven-factor solution with Eignevalue over than one can count 62% variance of e-learner success construct. Iin this stage 24 items where excluded due to lack of factor load in any eleven-factors. Another intention of this study is to test reliability of the developed tool. The reliability of the questionnaire found satisfactory, with a Cronbach alpha of α=0.84 for the entire set of questioner. Although the developed questionnaire have construct validity and is reliable but the predictive validity has a crucial importance for authors so it is continued with using multiple regression with inter method . The average score of items that is related to each factor were calculated and enterd as a predictor into linear regression. The finding showed that eleven-factor can predict 14% valiance of e-learner GPA in our sample. Comparing this tool with others, it shows that it is reliable and has predictive validity that can be used for Iranian engineering education institute. Finally the paper conclude findings and present some recommendation to use this toll effectively

Celiac disease in dyspeptic patients

Introduction: The screening of patients with dyspepsia, may allow an early identification of affected individuals. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of celiac disease in dyspeptic patients submitted to routine diagnostic upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. Materials and Methods: From November 2007 to October 2008, 407 patients who underwent endoscopy for any reason (193 male, 214 women mean age36.1 years) were studied in this work. Histological characteristics in duodenal biopsy specimens for celiac disease were evaluated according to the modified Marsh Classification1999. In addition, all patients were tested for total immunoglobulin A and anti-transglutaminase (tTG) antibodies. The patients with IgA deficiency were tested with IgG tTG. Results: Duodenal histology showed the malabsorption pattern (Marsh I-IIIc) in 26 (6.4%) cases and 33 cases had serological positive test for tTGA. In term of the serological analysis, 10 out of 33 tTGA positive patients had malabsorption pattern (Marsh I,-IIIc), and all of them had a positive tTGA (2.45%). Four of the 407 recruited patients were IgA deficient and none of them were positive for IgG tTG. Conclusion: In this study, about 6.4% of patients had malabsorption pattern and 8.1 % presented with positive serology for CD. However, both histology and serology were positive in 10/407 (2.45%). The high prevalence of celiac among dyspeptic symptomatic individuals indicates that they are a higher risk group for developing celiac disease