BACKGROUND Leptospirosis as an emerging infectious disease is considered as an important public health problem worldwide. OBJECTIVES The current study aimed to identify potential risks for leptospirosis among rice farmers in Khuzestan province, Iran. PATIENTS AND METHODS A cross-sectional study was carried out in Khuzestan, South west Iran, from October to December, 2012. Randomly selected ...

BACKGROUND Because of the economic importance of the Arab race horses and also the role of Toxoplasma gondii and Neospora spp. in abortion and reproductive failure of these animals, we decided to perform this study. OBJECTIVES We designed this study to investigate the seroprevalence of anti-Toxoplasma gondii and anti-Neospora spp. antibodies in Arab horses from 12 cities of Khuzestan province...

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) spread pattern is influenced by geographic and social factors. Nowadays Geographic Information System (GIS) is one of the most important epidemiological instrumentation identifying high-risk population groups and geographic areas of TB. The aim of this study was to determine the correlation between climate and geographic distribution of TB in Khuzestan Province usin...

BACKGROUND Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) is an uncommon neuro-inflammatory syndrome that has shown to be distinct from multiple sclerosis (MS) and associated with the autoantibody marker NMO-immunoglobulin G (IgG). There are still only a few studies regarding the epidemiology of NMO in Iran. In the present study, we tried to describe the epidemiology of NMO in Khuzestan as one of the densely popul...

BACKGROUND Rational prescription is a considerable issue which must be paid more attention to assess the behavior of prescribers. The aim of this study was to examine factors affecting family physicians' drug prescribing. METHODS We carried out a retrospective cross-sectional study in Khuzestan province, Iran in 2011. Nine hundred eighty-six prescriptions of 421 family physicians (including 3...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The most common serotype of enterohaemorrhagic Esherichia coli group or Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli is O157:H7. Domestic and wild ruminants are regarded as the main natural reservoirs. O157:H7 serotype is the major cause of gastrointestinal infections in developed countries. In this study was conducted to survey on the toxigenic E. coli O157: H7 strains in milk of in...

AIM To study the trend of hepatocellular carcinoma incidence after correcting the misclassification in registering cancer incidence across Iranian provinces in cancer registry data. METHODS Incidence data of hepatocellular carcinoma were extracted from Iranian annual of national cancer registration reports 2004 to 2008. A Bayesian method was implemented to estimate the rate of misclassificati...