BACKGROUND Tuberculosis is considered the second most common cause of death due to infectious agent. The currently preferred regimen for treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) is isoniazid, rifampin, pyrazinamide, and ethambutol, which has been used either as separate tablets (ST) or as fixed-dose combination (FDC). To date, no studies have compared both regimens in Qatar. We aim to evaluate...

BACKGROUND Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL) is a parasitic skin disease. Diagnosis primarily is based on clinical signs and microscopic observation of parasite on direct stained smears or tissue sections. Sensitivity of direct smear is not as high as molecular methods. The aim of this study was to identify and characterize Leishmania species among the negative direct smears obtained from skin ulcer...

Wegener's granulomatosis (WG) is an autoimmune multisystem small-vessel vasculitis (1). The incidence of cutaneous manifestations of WG (nodules, ulcers, purpura, petechiae, haemorrhagic pustules, erythematous papules and plaques) was reported to range from 28 to 64% (2, 3). We report here the case of a 66-year-old man who presented with chronic unilateral facial ulcer and was proven to have bi...

The evaluation of the quality of a sputum specimen prior to bacterial culture has been an accepted practice. However, optimal sputum criteria for pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) are not well established. We investigated indicators for sputum acceptability in tuberculosis cultures and acid-fast bacilli (AFB) smear. A post-hoc analysis of a randomized trial with 228 sputum specimens from 77 patients ...

spirometry has been used as a common diagnostic test in asthma. most of the patients with a mild asthma have a fev1 within normal range. hence, other diagnostic methods are usually used. the aim of this study was to evaluate whether eosinophil cationic protein (ecp) could be an accurate diagnostic marker of mild asthma. in this study diagnosis of asthma was made according to internationally acc...

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis screening is recommended for people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection to facilitate early diagnosis and safe initiation of antiretroviral therapy and isoniazid preventive therapy. No internationally accepted, evidence-based guideline addresses the optimal means of conducting such screening, although screening for chronic cough is common. METHODS We cons...

The clinical relevance of the lack of endocervical cells was never well established in a longitudinal study with histologically proven cervical cancer as an end point. From the Dutch Network and National Database for Pathology, results for all negative smears obtained in 1990 and 1991 in the Netherlands were retrieved, as were data for all cytologic and histologic examinations performed after t...