Prevalence of cytomegalovirus infection and its role in total immunoglobulin pattern in Iranian patients with different subtypes of multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common autoimmune disease characterized by multifocal areas of inflammatory demyelination within the central nervous system. Cytomegalovirus (CMV) has a complex pathobiology and in most cases is simply asymptomatic. There is some recent controversy over the role of CMV in the pathology of MS. The aim of this study was to evaluate active CMV infection and its effect on the humoral immunity in patients with MS. Serum, plasma, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), saliva and urine collected from MS patients (n=78) and healthy subjects (n=123) were screened for the presence of anti-CMV antibodies and CMV-DNA by nephelometric and PCR methods. Concentrations of total antibodies in MS subtypes were measured using both nephelometric and enzyme linked fluorescent assay (ELFA) techniques. The results extend the observation of an increased frequency of CMV-DNA in patients, in contrast with controls (p<0.001). Furthermore, systemic CMV infections were found in 25.5% of patients and only 3.2% of controls (p<0.001). There was significant difference in the titers of anti-CMV IgG and total IgE in patient and controls (P<0.001). These results support the hypothesis that CMV may contribute to MS thought to establish systemic infection process and induce immune response.

Designing and Implementation of Stable Sinusoidal Rough-Neural Identifier.

A rough neuron is defined as a pair of conventional neurons that are called the upper and lower bound neurons. In this paper, the sinusoidal rough-neural networks (SR-NNs) are used to identify the discrete dynamic nonlinear systems (DDNSs) with or without noise in series-parallel configuration. In the identification of periodic nonlinear systems, sinusoidal activation functions provide more efficient neural networks than the sigmoidal activation functions. Based on the Lyapunov stability theory, an online learning algorithm is developed to train the SR-NNs. The asymptotically convergence of the identification error to zero and the boundedness of parameters as well as predictions are proved. SR-NNs are used to identify some DDNSs and the cement rotary kiln (CRK). CRK is a complex nonlinear system in the cement factory, which produces the cement clinker. The experiments show that the SR-NNs in the identification of nonlinear systems have better performances than multilayer perceptrons (MLPs), sinusoidal neural networks, and rough MLPs, particularly in the presence of noise.

The Correlation between Troponin and Ferritin Serum Levels in the Patients with Major Beta-Thalassemia.

BACKGROUND: Thalassemia is a hereditary hemoglobinopathy whose most common complication is cardiac involvement which ends up in these patients' death. Since troponin is a sensitive and specific marker for the detection of microinfarct, we studied the relationship between troponin and ferritin serum levels for early diagnosis of cardiac involvement in these patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This case-control study was performed on 80 patients, including 40 patients with major thalassemia and normal echocardiography and 40 healthy volunteers ranging from 6 months to 16 years old. All the children were examined and the eligible children who were not infected with known heart disease, iron deficiency anemia, kidney disease, diabetes, fever, and systemic diseases were enrolled into the study after obtaining written informed consents from their parents. At 8:00 A.M. before breakfast, 5cc blood was drawn from these children. After collecting the samples, ferritin and troponin serum levels were evaluated using ELISA and electro- kymonolonsense methods, respectively. The gathered data were analyzed through the SPSS statistical software (v. 20) and T-test. Besides, P value<0.05 was considered as statistically significant. RESULTS: The study results revealed a significant difference between the two groups regarding the mean of the serum levels of troponin (P=0.045) and ferritin (P=0.001). In this study, no significant correlation was observed between serum troponin and ferritin levels and age and BMI in the two groups. Also, no significant relationship was found between serum troponin level and sex (P=0.264). CONCLUSIONS: In microinfarct, troponin increases independent of ferritin; therefore, it can be used for early detection of cardiac involvement in thalassemia patients to determine the sub-clinical effects.