Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is an important infectious disease with high mortality in the world. None of the countries stay safe from TB. Nowadays, different factors such as Co-morbidities, increase TB incidence. World Health Organization (WHO) last report about Iran's TB status shows rising trend of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and HIV/TB. More than 95% illness and death of TB cases are in developing countries. The most infections are in South East Asia and West Pacific that 56% of them are new cases in the world. The incidence is actually new cases of each year. Incidence prediction is affecting TB prevention, management and control. The purpose of this study is designing and creating a system to predict TB incidence by time series artificial neural networks (ANN) in Iran.
Methods: This study is a retrospective analytic. 10651 TB cases that registered on Iran’s Stop TB System from March 2014 to March 2016, Were analyzed. Most of reliable data used directly, some of them merged together and create new indicators and two columns used to compute a new indicator. At first, effective variables were evaluating with correlation coefficient tests then extracting by linear regression on SPSS statistical software, version 20 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA). We used different algorithms and number of neurons in hidden layer and delay in time series neural network. R, MSE (mean squared error) and regression graph were used for compare and select the best network. Incidence prediction neural network were designed on MATLAB® software, version R2014a (Mathworks Inc., Natick, MA, USA).
Results: At first, 23 independent variables entered to study. After correlation coefficient and regression, 12 variables with P≤0.01 in Spearman and P≤0.05 in Pearson were selected. We had the best value of R, MSE (mean squared error) and also regression graph in train, validation and tested by Bayesian regularization algorithm with 10 neuron in hidden layer and two delay.
Conclusion: This study showed that artificial neural network had acceptable function to extract knowledge from TB raw data; ANN is beneficial to TB incidence prediction.

Background: Differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) frequently occurs in women at fertility age. One of the cornerstones in treating this malignancy is Radioactive Iodine (RAI) therapy following thyroid resection. In this study, we evaluated the effect of RAI therapy on the fertility rate and pregnancy complications.
Methods: This is a retrospective study on 41 patients with differentiated thyroid cancer, with at least one experience of pregnancy after standard treatment (thyroid resection followed by radioiodine therapy). All patients have been signed a written consent form in initial admission to our department. Furthermore, we asked our patients to fill in a questionnaire about their thyroid cancer and its treatment as well as pregnancy and its complication. As a control group with no different mean age, the same checklist has also been filled in for the patient’s healthy sister too, just related to gravidity and its complications. The complications of pregnancy were registered in these patients and compared with the control group consisted of their healthy sisters. Also, the association of abortion rate with other underlying factors has been assessed. All data has been included in SPSS software, version 22 (IBM SPSS, Armonk, NY, USA) and analyzed using logistic regression. This study conducted at the Nuclear Medicine Department of Ghaem Hospital in Mashhad, from May 2017 to February 2018 with the support of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Iran.
Results: No significant difference was noted in the mean age between case (differentiated thyroid cancer) and control groups (P=0.9). The two groups were also statistically similar in terms of pregnancy frequency (P=0.05) and number of alive children (P=0.8). Abortion seems to be the only item in DTC patients which was more than healthy sisters (0.2 versus 0.7) (P=0.003). However, this statistical difference showed no direct relationship with radioiodine treatment (RIT). As in DTC patients before and after RIT, no significant difference has been detected in DTC patients before and after RIT (P=0.48). Birth weight was not statistically different in DTC patients before and after RIT (P=0.66) and between DTC patients and their healthy sisters (P=0.2).
Conclusion: Radioiodine therapy for differentiated thyroid carcinoma has no considerable negative impact on pregnancy, whether on fertility rate or on gravity complications.

Background: Prostate cancer has been reported as a worldwide important kind of cancer and the second most common cause of cancer-related mortality among men. Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) serum level is one of the most important markers of prostate cancer diagnosis. While PSA level helps predict the risk of prostate cancer development, researchers still looking for ways to increase the accuracy of prognostic models. To increase the specificity of PSA and decrease of unnecessary biopsies and morbidity, PSA-related parameters such as PSA doubling time (PSADT) have been used. In this study, the relationship between this factor and the severity of prostate cancer was evaluated.
Methods: In this retrospective study, the data of patients who were subjected to transrectal ultrasound-guided (TRUS) biopsy of the prostate and referred to Imam Khomeini Hospital, Tehran, between 2009 and 2017 were reviewed. We enrolled the men with at least two consecutive elevated PSA level within three months to calculate PSADT. Based on the pathology report, primary and secondary Gleason score (GS) were determined. Correspondingly, considering GS, the patients were divided into two groups with high-grade and low-grade tumor (GS<7 considered as low-grade and GS>7 considered as high-grade tumor).
Results: Totally, 1712 cases of TRUS biopsy of the prostate were studied. Among them, 547 (32.3%) had prostate cancer, of whom 73 cases were eligible based on inclusion criteria and were consented to enroll in the study. According to the data obtained, we found a significant difference in PSADT between the two groups of patients with high-grade and low-grade malignancy (mean±SD PSADT, 9.8±14.2 vs. 16.1±14.9 respectively, P=0.004). Considering the seven months as the cut-off point for PSADT in determining malignancy, there was a significant difference between the two groups according to Fisher's exact test (P=0.01).
Conclusion: In our study, PSADT cut-off of 7 months provided the greatest accuracy for differentiation between low-grade and high-grade malignancy, and PSADT has acceptable accuracy for the diagnosis of high-grade tumors.

Background: Cubital tunnel syndrome, a neuropathy of ulnar nerve, is the second most common entrapping syndrome in the upper limb surpassing carpal tunnel syndrome. This syndrome arises from a high pressure decompressing the nerve for a long time. Patients with cubital tunnel syndrome show numbness in the ring and small fingers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the etiology of cubital tunnel syndrome in patients who underwent surgery for treatment of the syndrome.
Methods: In this retrospective study, medical records of 100 patients who underwent surgery for treatment of cubital tunnel syndrome at Department of Neurosurgery, Poursina Hospital, Rasht, Iran from March 2008 to March 2017, were checked. The etiology of cubital tunnel syndrome including inflammatory, tumoral, vascular, orthopedic causes and anomalies in nerve site and information about age, gender, job, and weight were collected and analyzed.
Results: In this study, the mean±SD of age was 33.8±11.5 years. Females and males constituted 21% and 79% of the cases, respectively. Idiopathic and orthopedic etiologies were seen in 84% and 13% of the operated cases, respectively. Vascular, tumoral, and inflammatory causes were found in 1% of the cases. Regarding location of nerve involvement, 57% of the cases had the ulnar nerve entrapment between MCL (medial collateral ligament) and Osborne ligaments; and in 22% of the cases, the cubital tunnel was involved. Arcade of Struthers and medial epicondyle and medial intermuscular septum were involved in 8%, 8%, and 5% of the patients, respectively. Forty-five percent of the cases performed a repetitive manual task by hand and 1.9% of cases were vibrator workers. Moreover, 12.4% of cases had a history of cubitus valgus or cubitus varus. Finally, 20.9% and 18% of the cases suffered from obesity (BMI>30) and diabetes mellitus, respectively. Furthermore, one patient had a history of head injury with contractions of upper limb flexion and one patient had arthritis of medial epicondylitis.
Conclusion: The evidence from the present study indicates that the idiopathic cubital tunnel syndrome constituted the bulk of involvement on ulnar nerve in the patients. Job, obesity, and diabetes were the most important accompanying factors with cubital tunnel syndrome.