A retrospective study of laboratory reports of sputums examined in the first 3 months of 1977 and of 1978 showed some interesting findings, which were similar in these 2 years. Analysis of the findings demonstrated that information from a proportion of sputum cultures were not helpful to the clinicians. Probable causes of such unhelpful results and some ways to overcome these problems were disc...

the study has strived to compare the leucocyte-esterase stripe activity on sputum samples with gram-stained direct smear microscopy. this is for the demonstration of white blood cells (wbcs) and so to develop a simple method for selecting suitable sputum samples for cultural examination and laboratory diagnosis. . a total of 17(34.0%) out of 50 samples studied were shown to be unsuitable for mi...

background and objectives: sputum smear staining for acid-fast bacilli is initial approach to the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis (ptb) but more than 50% of cases are sputum smear-negative. this study was aimed to investigate the diagnostic value of fiberoptic bronchoscopy (fob) guided bronchoalveolar lavage (bal) in patients suspected to have tuberculosis. methods: this prospective cross-s...

we investigated the use of dna amplification by polymerase chain reaction (per) for detection of mycobacterium tuberculosis in 300 patients who were suspected of having pulmonary tuberculosis and compared the results with culture results which were performed in parallel with pcr. two-thirds of each sample was processed for smear and culture by standard methods and one-third was prepared for dna...

background and objectives: apoptosis of eosinophils is of significant value in assessing the airway inflammation in patients with asthma. our purpose was to investigate the degree of expression of the bcl-2 protein in sputum eosinophils during acute asthma exacerbation and its relationship with exacerbation severity.    materials and methods: the study was carried out in mostafa khomeini hospit...

background: tuberculosis (tb) continues to pose a major global health problem and thus intensive action is needed to control and ultimately eliminate the disease . methods: an active case finding (acf) survey was conducted in the urban slum areas of the r-south municipal ward of mumbai city for a period of two months from june to july 2012. micro planning for survey was done by district tubercu...

background: hepatotoxicity is a major concern during tuberculosis (tb) drug therapy. its prevalence ranges from 1%-4% in developed countries to 11.5% in developing countries, and is even higher in countries such as india. disease mortality is 5%, but can be prevented by early detection. this study reveals the revalence and outcome of drug-induced hepatitis (dih) in positive sputum tb patients t...

Background: Recently, reports have indicated a role for the membrane form of Toll-like Receptor 2 (TLR2) in asthma pathogenesis. In this study we examined soluble TLR2 levels in serum and sputum of asthmatic and healthy subjects. Methods: Serum and sputum samples were obtained from 33 asthmatic and 19 healthy subjects. The asthmatics were classified into four groups according to the Global I...