BACKGROUND Lower respiratory tract infections are among the most common infectious diseases of humans worldwide and continue to be a major cause of morbidity in Nigeria. This study focused on determining the microbial agents of lower respiratory tract infections, the effect of age and gender on its prevalence, and the susceptibility profile of bacterial isolates. METHODS Sputum specimens were...

This paper describes a novel method for explaining Bayesian network (BN) inference when the network is modeling a population of conditionally independent agents, each of which is modeled as a subnetwork. For example, consider disease-outbreak detection, in which the agents are patients who are modeled as independent, conditioned on the factors that cause disease spread. Given evidence about the...

purpose: to determine any possible correlation between delayed ocular complications with late-onset complications of mustard gas poisoning in other systems including skin, respiratory tract, and immunohematologic system. methods: the study was conducted on 40 chemical war victims in khorasan province, iran. ophthalmologic and dermatologic examinations and spirometry were performed for all patie...

Coronavirus disease 2019, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, has recently become the number one problem affecting global health. Coronavirus disease 2019 is principally recognized by its respiratory manifestations; however, recent studies have shown an increasing number of patients with gastrointestinal complaints like diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal discomfort...

This study conducted at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine from April 1990 to December 1992, identified the etiology of acute lower respiratory tract infection (ALRI) in 119 (36.9%) of 317 hospitalized children < 5 years of age. A higher proportion of respiratory viruses (27.2%) than bacterial agents (10.7%) were identified. Viral agents (adenovirus, RSV, parainfluenza 3, influenza A ...

The emergence and spread of antimicrobial-resistant bacterial, viral, and fungal pathogens for which diminishing treatment options are available is of major global concern. New viral respiratory tract infections with epidemic potential, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, swine-origin influenza A H1N1, and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus infection, require development of new...

Oxidative stress occurs when free radicals and other reactive species overwhelm the availability of antioxidants. Reactive oxygen species (ROS), reactive nitrogen species, and their counterpart antioxidant agents are essential for physiological signaling and host defense, as well as for the evolution and persistence of inflammation. When their normal steady state is disturbed, imbalances betwee...

This paper presents a multi agent system for the job shop scheduling problems. The proposed system consists of initial scheduling agent, search agents, and schedule management agent. In initial scheduling agent, a modified Shifting Bottleneck is proposed. That is, an effective heuristic approach and can generate a good solution in a low computational effort. In search agents, a hybrid search ap...

BACKGROUND Influenza-like illness (ILI) may be caused by a variety of pathogens. Clinical observations are of little help to recognise myxovirus infection and implement appropriate prevention measures. The limited use of molecular tools underestimates the role of other common pathogens. OBJECTIVES During the early weeks of the 2009-2010 flu pandemic, a clinical and virological survey was cond...

Novel respiratory viruses have been identified as possible agents of upper and lower respiratory tract infections. Multiplex real-time PCRs have been developed to identify clinically relevant respiratory pathogens. In this study, 178 respiratory samples already screened for influenza virus types A and B by Flu A/B ASR real-time PCR kit were retrospectively analyzed with the Respiratory Multi We...