Common Aeroallergens in Patients with Asthma and Allergic Rhinitis Living in Southwestern Part of Iran: Based on Skin Prick Test Reactivity

Aeroallergens continue to have a key role in the pathogenesis of asthma and allergic diseases and have recently received increased attention in medical research throughout the world. The prevalence of aeroallergens vary in different regions, depending on the type of climate. The aim of the present study was to determine prevalence of the sensitivity to aeroallergens among patients with asthma and allergic rhinitis (AR), based on skin prick test (SPT) reactivity in the province of Bushehr, Iran. In this cross-sectional study, 743 patients were enrolled. The participants had asthma and AR and reacted to at least one allergen with SPT. Skin prick test with standard extracts including house dust mites (HDMs), animal dander, molds and pollens were performed on patients according to the herbal geography of the area. The male to female ratio and mean age of the patients were 1.03 and 27.6± 15.4 year, respectively. Out of 567 patients with AR, the common aeroallergens were HDMs (88.5%), molds (82.9%), animal dander (79.5%), weeds (77.6%), trees (75.5%) and grass pollen (71.5%). Moreover, among 176 patients with asthma, the prevalence of aeroallergens were HDMs (90.5 %), molds (80.7%), animal dander (77.5%), weeds (73.3%), trees (73.3%) and grass pollen (67.9%). The sensitivity to animal dander, Chenopodium album and Russian thistle pollens were significantly associated with the severity of AR. Moreover, sensitivity to animal dander such as cat and feather of birds, cockroach, Bermuda grass and Chenopodium album pollens were significantly associated with the severity of asthma. The results of this study revealed that HDM was the most common sensitizing aeroallergen in patients with asthma and AR. Molds and animal dander as indoor allergens were also common aeroallergens. We suggest that the hot weather and ambient humidity in the region may be the main cause of the change in the pattern of SPT reactivity

Dusty Air Pollution is Associated with an Increased Risk of Allergic Diseases in Southwestern Part of Iran

Concerns have been raised about the adverse impact of dusty air pollution (DAP) on human health. The aim of this study was to find the association between dusty air pollution based on air quality index (AQI) and the risk of allergic diseases in southwestern provinces of Iran, with assessing cytokine profiles and lymphocyte immunophenotypes. In this case control study 148 individuals participated. The sampling was done in hazardous condition (AQI >300) as the case and clean air (AQI <50) as the control. We measured cytokine production by using ELISA method and phenotypes of T-lymphocytes (CD4+ and CD8+), CD19+ B-lymphocytes, CD25+, CD4+ CD25+ cells by FACSort flow cytometer. The mean serum level of IL-4 (33.4±2.9 vs 0.85± 0.65 pg/dl) and IL-13 (15.1±4.4 vs. 0.12±0.7 pg/dl) in the subjects exposed to ambient DAP was increased significantly compared to the individuals in the clean air condition. Also, CD19+ B-lymphocytes (12.6± 4.9 vs 8.9±3.2%) and CD4+ CD25+ cell count (13.6± 4.6 vs 7.7± 3.8%) in peripheral blood were increased significantly in subjects exposed to ambient DAP compared with the controls. The result of our study suggested that ambient DAP affected immune system in a way that might lead to allergic diseases in the population

Prevalence and Risk Factors of Asthma and Allergic Diseases in Primary Schoolchildren Living in Bushehr, Iran: Phase I, III ISAAC Protocol

Asthma and allergic diseases present a major health burden. Information on the prevalence of these diseases indicates that these diseases are increasing in various parts of the world. It was hoped that this study would be helpful to health system policy-makers in planning allergy prevention programs in the region. The prevalence of asthma and allergic diseases and relation between the various risk factors involved were assessed among schoolchildren in the city of Bushehr, Iran. The ISAAC Phase I and III questionnaires were completed by parents of 1280 children aged 6-7 years and self-completed by 1115 students aged 13-14 years. The prevalence of atopic eczema, allergic rhinitis and asthma among 6-7 year-old students were 12.1%, 11.8% and 6.7%, respectively. While, the prevalence of these diseases among 13-14 year-old students were found to be 19%, 30% and 7.6%, respectively. There was an association between asthma and allergic rhinitis as well as eczema (p<0.05). Consumption of fast food as a risk factor was significantly associated with asthma (p=0.03). The prevalence of asthma and allergic diseases was high among schoolchildren in the city of Bushehr, Iran. Also an association was observed between the fast food consumption and asthma. Keywords: Allergic rhinitis; Asthma, Atopic eczema; Children; ISAAC; Prevalenc

Prevalence of Asthma and Allergic Diseases and Its Risk Factors in School Children Aged (6-7 and 13-14 Years) in Assalouyeh City, Bushehr Province Based on III ISAAC Protocol Phase I, in 2014

Background: Asthma and allergic diseases are raised as a major health &nbsp;problem. The prevalence of these diseases are increasing in Iran and &nbsp;all over the world. Based on this, the present study assessed to prevalence of these diseases in Assalouyeh region, Bushehr Province. Material and Methods: This study was performed on 190 school children aged 6-7 years and 223 girl student aged 13-14 years in Assalouyeh city in 2014 based on ISAAC standard questionnaires Phase I and III which examined prevalence and risk factors for these diseases. Results: The prevalence of atopic eczema, allergic rhinitis and asthma among &nbsp;6-7 year-old students were 11.6%, 13.7% and 5.8%, respectively. While, the prevalence of these diseases among 13-14 year-old students were 14.3%, 21.5% and 15.2%, respectively. Also, there were a significant association between risk factors such as exposure to tobacco smoke, pet keeping, consumption of fast and sea foods with prevalence of these diseases (P<0.05). Conclusion: Asthma and allergic diseases were high among school children in Assalouyeh and it seems that this increasing prevalenc can be associated with risk factors such as exposure to tobacco smoke, pet keeping, consumption of fast and sea foods

A Multi-Organ Nucleus Segmentation Challenge

Generalized nucleus segmentation techniques can contribute greatly to reducing the time to develop and validate visual biomarkers for new digital pathology datasets. We summarize the results of MoNuSeg 2018 Challenge whose objective was to develop generalizable nuclei segmentation techniques in digital pathology. The challenge was an official satellite event of the MICCAI 2018 conference in which 32 teams with more than 80 participants from geographically diverse institutes participated. Contestants were given a training set with 30 images from seven organs with annotations of 21,623 individual nuclei. A test dataset with 14 images taken from seven organs, including two organs that did not appear in the training set was released without annotations. Entries were evaluated based on average aggregated Jaccard index (AJI) on the test set to prioritize accurate instance segmentation as opposed to mere semantic segmentation. More than half the teams that completed the challenge outperformed a previous baseline. Among the trends observed that contributed to increased accuracy were the use of color normalization as well as heavy data augmentation. Additionally, fully convolutional networks inspired by variants of U-Net, FCN, and Mask-RCNN were popularly used, typically based on ResNet or VGG base architectures. Watershed segmentation on predicted semantic segmentation maps was a popular post-processing strategy. Several of the top techniques compared favorably to an individual human annotator and can be used with confidence for nuclear morphometrics

A multi-organ nucleus segmentation challenge

Generalized nucleus segmentation techniques can contribute greatly to reducing the time to develop and validate visual biomarkers for new digital pathology datasets. We summarize the results of MoNuSeg 2018 Challenge whose objective was to develop generalizable nuclei segmentation techniques in digital pathology. The challenge was an official satellite event of the MICCAI 2018 conference in which 32 teams with more than 80 participants from geographically diverse institutes participated. Contestants were given a training set with 30 images from seven organs with annotations of 21,623 individual nuclei. A test dataset with 14 images taken from seven organs, including two organs that did not appear in the training set was released without annotations. Entries were evaluated based on average aggregated Jaccard index (AJI) on the test set to prioritize accurate instance segmentation as opposed to mere semantic segmentation. More than half the teams that completed the challenge outperformed a previous baseline. Among the trends observed that contributed to increased accuracy were the use of color normalization as well as heavy data augmentation. Additionally, fully convolutional networks inspired by variants of U-Net, FCN, and Mask-RCNN were popularly used, typically based on ResNet or VGG base architectures. Watershed segmentation on predicted semantic segmentation maps was a popular post-processing strategy. Several of the top techniques compared favorably to an individual human annotator and can be used with confidence for nuclear morphometrics