Objective: Bacterial meningitis is a dangerous and sometimes fatal infection that affects the central nervous system. Because some antibiotics can prevent some types of these Bacteria and supress them from spreading and infecting, therefore it is important to know what type of virus or bacterium is causing meningitis. Haemophilus influenzae and Neisseria meningitides are the two main pathogens causinig acute bacterial meningitis. Different methods are used for the detection of H. influenzae and N. meningitidis but they are of low sensitivity, taking long time and difficult to perform. Therefore, complementary methods are necessary for more sensitive detection of these agents.Materials and Methods: In this study, a multiplex polymerase chain reaction (mPCR) assay was developed for detection of H. influenzae and N. meningitidis. These strains were confirmed by biochemical methods. Two specific primer pairs were designed for lic-1 and opa genes of H. influenzae and N. meningitidis respectively.Results: DNA amplification product fragments were 150bp and 320bp for H. influenzae and N. meningitidis, respectively. Streptococcus pneumoniae used as a negative control and did not yield a PCR product.Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that PCR is a useful complementary diagnostic technique, especially when Gram stain, culture, or antigenic detection is negative or inconclusive.

Background and Aim: Influenza is a global epidemic disease that always causes irreparable damage to individuals and countries' health, and the amount of research in this area is increasing. The primary purpose this study is to discover the hidden patterns and emerging events of global influenza publications. Materials and Methods: This article is an applied type was done with an analytical approach and using the Co-word analysis method. This research's statistical population includes all the keywords of documents indexed with influenza's subject in the WOSCC in the last two decades. The number of keywords studied in this article is 26767. MeSH was used to determine the search strategy for document retrieval. Results: The keywords "Avian Influenza" and "Influenza Vaccine" with a frequency of 1302 and 1264 were the most frequent keywords in the subject area of influenza. Findings related to the analysis of clusters by the hierarchical clustering method created 21 clusters in the field of influenza. Seventeen clusters with the most keywords were the largest cluster. The strategic diagram indicated that most influenza subject area clusters are located in the third quadrant of the strategic diagram and are considered emerging or declining subjects. Conclusion: Discovering the intellectual structure, presenting hidden patterns and emerging events of global publications in the field of influenza infections can help governments, communities, and research centers in understanding research advances, optimizing and managing future research topics, and effectively monitoring and policy-making activities—, new research and allocation of facilities and budget.

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a clinical syndrome consisting of tachypnea, refractory hypoxemia, and diffuse opacities on chest radiographs after infection or trauma which ultimately leads to respiratory failure. The principles of treatment are based on patient care in ICU, mechanical ventilation and medical treatments. By using lower plateau, less tidal volume, higher positive end-expiratory pressure, fluid restriction, treatment of infections and avoiding any high-dose steroids can improve the survival of these patients. In this paper, we present a case of ARDS in a patient with suspected influenza.

One of the tragic consequences of the Great Wars is the spread of epidemics. At the end of the First World War, flu spread in Europe and soon spread in many parts of the world including Iran. This event was accompanied by loss of many people in Shiraz. In two notes remained from that time, one belongs to a liberal and the other one belongs to one of the most famous physicians of Shiraz, the outbreak of flu is recounted with precise details that can’t be found in the official sources. Therefore these two sources give us valuable information. In this paper, using these notes, Shiraz social situation is studied at the time of flu outbreak.

Influenza A viruses possesses two virion surface glycoproteins including haemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). The NA plays an important role in viral replication and promotes virus release from infected cells and facilitates virus spread throughout the body. To find out any genomic changes that might be occurred on NA gene of avian, influenza circulating viruses, we have genetically analyzed the neuraminidase gene of six Avian Influenza (AI) viruses H9N2 subtype isolated from different parts of Iran. A comparison of deduced amino acid sequences, showed some amino acid substitutions among the local AI isolates. However no insertions/deletions or shortening in the stalk region of the genes were observed. Mutation in Glu 119 as a marker for enzyme sensitivity to the antiviral drugs was not observed. Phylogenitic analysis revealed three distinct groups among the isolates of Iran, Hong Kong, and Pakistan/Japan/Saudi Arabia respectively. Based on the results, no significant mutations in NA genes of the viruses isolated during the period of the study occurred and our findings are in agreement with results of previous study of the viruses indicated a low pathogen character for the isolates on the basis of amino acid sequence of HA cleavage site and experimental infection.

Introduction: Influenza is an infectious and severe respiratory disease. It is one of the major problems of public health. In order to determine the spatial distribution and areas with over-expected of a disease including influenza, it can be effective in identifying environmental hazards and fair distribution of health services. In this study, the geographical distribution of the influenza and the identification of the high risk clusters of this disease were investigated. Materials and Methods: In this study, the incidence information of influenza in a 21-month period (until October 2018) from eastern Mediterranean countries were used. The data were extracted from the world health organization's reports and used to determine the areas with over-expected incidence of influenza using flexible scan statistics. Results: In total, 28055 cases of influenza have been reported in the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean region during the study period. Results detected four high-risk cluster in this region. According to the results, incidence of influenza in Bahrain, Kuwait and the Qatar was significantly higher than expected. In the second place, Oman and Tunisia were also considered as a high-risk region, separately. Jordan was the next cluster, however there was no statistically significant difference between expected and observed cases of influenza in this cluster. Conclusion: The results of flexible spatial exploration statistics indicated the high incidence of influenza in the countries of west of Asia and north of Africa in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Therefore, the influenza control system at the regional and national levels in high-risk countries is strongly recommended.