Human toxocariasis seroprevalence among patients with uveitis in Alborz Province, Iran.

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE: Toxocariasis, predominantly caused by Toxocara canis, is a common zoonotic parasitosis worldwide. Toxocara infection is a cause of vision impairment and blindness. The presented study investigates the frequency of antibodies against Toxocara among uveitis patients and the epidemiological factors associated with disease. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Fifty-four patients with uveitis and 59 healthy subjects were studied. Anti-Toxocara antibodies status was determined in all serum samples using enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and seropositive samples analyzed by Western blot (WB) technique. RESULTS: The frequency of Toxocara canis infection was found to be significantly higher in uveitis patients, compared to healthy controls by the use of ELISA test, being 14.8% and 1.7%, respectively. From 8 seropositive samples, 5 (62.5%) patients exhibited Toxocara immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies in response to Western blot, whereas in the control group, none were detected positive by Western blot. No significant difference was found between pet owners, nor between different places of residence. The seroprevalence to Toxocara among uveitis patients was significantly related to gender, age and medical diagnosis. The highest prevalence was found in patients with posterior uveitis (27.8%). CONCLUSIONS: Anti-Toxocara antibody titers are associated with the risk of vision impairment -uveitis. The risk factor associated with Toxocara exposure identified in this study warrants further investigation.

The Estimation of Economic Burden of Hepatitis C Virus Infection in Iran.

BACKGROUND: One of the major causes of liver-related mortality and morbidity is Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) infection. It is also one of the reasons behinds of chronic liver disease and related complications such as cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. This autoimmune liver disease imposes a high economic burden on individuals and the society. This study aimed to estimate burden of HCV in Iran. METHODS: Overall, 200 patients with HCV infection, referred to hospitals in three cities of Tehran, Karaj and Tabriz, Iran during year 2015, were randomly enrolled. To estimate the total burden of hepatitis, direct and indirect costs, costs of DALYs and social welfare were calculated. RESULTS: Economic burden of HCV infection was obtained 26242.8 purchasing power parity (PPP$). Intangible costs of HCV was calculated 207421.6 PPP$. CONCLUSION: Total direct costs of HCV for each patient are more than household consumption expenditure. Therefore, it is a reasonable policy to control and increase insurance coverage of HCV patients in order to decrease their costs.

A data mining approach for modeling churn behavior via RFM model in specialized clinics Case study: A public sector hospital in Tehran.

Nowadays Health care industry has a significant growth in using data mining techniques to discover hidden information for effective decision making. Huge amount of healthcare data is suitable to mine hidden patterns and knowledge. In this paper we traced behavior of patients during the period of 3 years in three clinics of a big public sector hospital and tried to detect special groups and their tendencies by RFML model as a customer life time value (CLV). The main goal was to detect 'potential for loyal' customers for strengthen relationships and 'potential to churn' customers for recovery of the efficiency of customer retention campaigns and reduce the costs associated with churn. This strategy helps hospital administrators to increase profit and reduce costs of customers' loss. At first, K-means clustering algorithm was applied for identification of target customers and groups and then, decision tree classifier as churn prediction was used. We compared performance of three clinics based on the number of loyal and churn customers. Our results showed that Pediatric Hematology clinic had a better performance than that of other clinics, because of more number of loyal customers.