Asthma is linked with obesity, and there is an association between asthma severity and BMI with serum leptin and leptin/adiponectin levels, but our results do not support a significant role of adiponectin in obesity or asthma.

Background/AimsGastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and cow's milk allergy (CMA) are two common conditions that occur in infancy. This study was performed to investigate the frequency of CMA in a group of patients with GERD.MethodsEighty-one children with signs and symptoms of GERD were enrolled in this study. All subjects received omeprazole for 4 weeks after the initial evaluation. Empirical elimination of cow's milk from the diet was started for the patients who did not respond to the omeprazole treatment.ResultsSeventy-two cases presented with gastrointestinal signs and symptoms, whereas the remaining nine cases presented with respiratory complaints. After the initial treatment with omeprazole, two thirds of the cases (54 patients, 66.7%) responded well, and all of their symptoms were resolved. Cow's milk was eliminated from the diets of the remaining 27 patients. All signs and symptoms of GERD were resolved in this group after a 4 week elimination of cow's milk from the diet.ConclusionsA diagnosis of CMA was considered in one third of the pediatric cases with signs and symptoms of GERD. This finding shows that CMA can mimic or aggravate all signs and symptoms of severe GERD during infancy.

In this paper, several Manifold Learning (ML) techniques for dimension reduction of EEG feature vectors are introduced and applied on set of epileptic EEG signals. These include Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Multidimensional Scaling (MDS), Isometric Mapping (ISOMAP) and Locally Linear Embedding (LLE). While EEG signals of epileptic patients contain necessary information with regards to the various brain states of epileptic patients, for extraction of useful information in the EEG signals and for detection, often construction of high-dimensional feature vectors is utilized. Analysis of such high-dimensional feature vectors are complex and time consuming. This paper deals with dimension reduction of the extracted feature vectors and comparative analysis of the performance of several manifold learning techniques as applied on EEG signals of epileptic patients.

Background: Food allergy is an abnormal immunologic reaction to food proteins. During infancy, allergic colitis presents with bloody stool of a healthy child. calprotectin is released into the intestinal lumen by macrophages and neutrophils and is a reliable and non-invasive biomarker for evaluating inflammation of the digestive system. Objectives: This study evaluated the changes of fecal calprotectin after modification of mother's diet, on breastfed infants with food allergy. Methods: This study was conducted on 29 infants less than one year old with allergic colitis, referred to the Besat hospital of Sanandaj (Iran) from 2013 to 2014. All infants were breast-fed. The fecal calprotectin levels were measured on admission; two and six weeks after starting hypo-allergenic diet for mothers and its levels were correlated with clinical findings. Results: With the onset of maternal hypoallergenic diet, clinical symptoms showed a statistically significant reduction (P < 0.05). The fecal calprotectin levels decreased during the study. Despite the declining trend of the fecal calprotectin levels, there was no statistical correlation between clinical and laboratory findings (P = 0.741 and P = 0.284). Conclusions:This study showed that changes on fecal calprotectin levels are not a good indicator for assessment of clinical improvement in food allergy. There was no statistically significant difference between the fecal calprotectin levels on admission, two weeks and six weeks after the intervention.

Background: The prevalence of allergic rhinitis in the world is 10-15%, and it is currently the most common chronic disease among children. There is no comprehensive statistics about the prevalence of allergic rhinitis among Iranian children, therefore, this systematic review and metaanalysis was conducted to evaluate the prevalence of allergic rhinitis among the Iranian children. Methods: The present study was conducted based on Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist. The data was collected using key words including allergic rhinitis, prevalence, epidemiology, child OR children, pediatrics and Iran, in international databases including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane, Embase, and three national databases including Magiran, Iran Medex, and Scientific Information Databank (SID) till December 2018. The STROBE checklist was used for quality assessment. The data were analyzed using STATA software version 12.1. Results: The prevalence of allergic rhinitis in children and adolescents were 18% (99.7% CI: 10-28% with publication bias of 0.174) and 25% (99.8% CI: 17-33 with publication bias of 0.617) respectively. The prevalence of allergic rhinitis in males was estimated to be 27% (99.4% CI: 17-36) with publication bias of 0.538 and in females was 23% (99.4% CI: 14-31) with publication bias of 0.926. Conclusion: The prevalence of allergic rhinitis is approximately high among Iranian children and adolescents; thus, educational strategies should be considered to decrease the prevalence of this disease in Iran.

Background. Asthma is an important reason for hospitalization in children aged under five years. Information about the current status of asthma in Iranian children can help the Iranian health sector plan carefully and prevent asthma incidence by educating the families. The present systematic review and meta-analysis is aimed at estimating asthma prevalence in Iranian children and adolescents. Method. Data were found using keywords such as prevalence, epidemiology, asthma, adolescent, children, pediatrics, Iran in Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Cochrane, and Embase databases. Three national databases, including Magiran, Barakat Pharmed Co (Iran medex), and Scientific Information Databank (SID) were searched until 1 October 2020. Cross-sectional and original studies were included in the study, and then, quality assessment was done using the National Institutes of Health’s Quality Assessment Tool for Observational Cohort and Cross-Sectional Studies. A pooled estimated prevalence of asthma was calculated using Der Simonian-Laird random model. Egger’s test was used to evaluate publication bias. The data were analyzed using the STATA software version 16. Results. 30 studies were selected and investigated. The prevalence of asthma in children and adolescents was 6% and 8%, and the prevalence in boys and girls was 9% and 8%, respectively. Among the asthma symptoms, wheezing had the most prevalence (17% in children and 19% in adolescents) and sleep disturbance had the lowest prevalence (6% in children and 6% in adolescents). Conclusion. The prevalence of asthma in Iranian children and adolescents is lower than in the world. Existing strategies should be pursued followed. Also, guidelines for asthma control and prevention should be considered in the future.

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It is deduced that sPD-L1 can be used as a helpful marker to determine the severity of AR. Furthermore, this study indicated that sPD-L1 may have an inhibitory role in AR development, and its modulation may be considered as a useful accessory therapeutic approach for reduction of AR progression.