Artificial neural network and logistic regression modelling to characterize COVID-19 infected patients in local areas of Iran.

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 is an infectious disease that started spreading globally at the end of 2019. Due to differences in patient characteristics and symptoms in different regions, in this research, a comparative study was performed on COVID-19 patients in 6 provinces of Iran. Also, multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network and Logistic Regression (LR) models were applied for the diagnosis of COVID-19. METHODS: A total of 1043 patients with suspected COVID-19 infection in Iran participated in this study. 29 characteristics, symptoms and underlying disease were obtained from hospitalized patients. Afterwards, we compared the obtained data between confirmed cases. Furthermore, the data was applied for building the ANN and LR models to diagnosis the infected patients by COVID-19. RESULTS: In 750 confirmed patients, Common symptoms were: fever (%) >37.5 °C, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, chills and headache. The most common underlying diseases were: hypertension, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and coronary heart disease. Finally, the accuracy of the ANN model to the diagnosis of COVID-19 infection was higher than the LR model. CONCLUSION: The prevalent symptoms and underlying diseases of COVID-19 patients were similar in different provinces, but the incidence of symptoms was significantly different from each other. Also, the study demonstrated that ANN and LR models have a high ability in the diagnosis of COVID-19 infection.

Heparin Enhances the Effects of Mesenchymal Stem Cell Transplantation in a Rabbit Model of Acute Myocardial Infarction.

Stem cell transplantation in combination with administration of bioactive compounds has shown promising resultsin treating myocardial infraction (MI). In the current study, we investigated the effect of combining mesenchymal stem cells(MSCs) transplantation with heparin into the infarcted heart rabbits. For this purpose, 35 male New Zealand white rabbitswere randomly divided into five groups: sham, MI, MI+ MSCs, MI+ heparin and MI+MSCs+ heparin. MI was induced by30 min ligation of the left anterior descending coronary artery. The animals of MSCs and MSCs +heparin groups wereinjected cell culture containing MSCs intramyocardially into the infarct area. Functional parameters of the left ventricle byechocardiography, serum levels of VEGF by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, size of fibrotic area by Masson'strichrome staining, evaluation of morphology by Haematoxylin-Eosin and capillary density alkaline phosphatase stainingwere compared between groups. Ejection fraction, fractional shortening and levels of VEGF significantly improved in MSCsand MSCs + heparin group (P<0.05). The fibrotic area was significantly reduced (p=0.009) in MSC + heparin treated animalsin comparison with MSCs. Number of live cells and angiogenesis were increased significantly in MSCs + heparin groups incomparison with MSCs (p< 0.05). Although injection of MSCs significantly restored normal function of fibrotic area, wefound that administration of heparin combined with MSCs to infarcted heart of animals could have better effects on LVfunctional parameters in fibrosis area and resulted in superior therapeutic outcome in enhancing neovascularization andimproving cardiac fibrosis.