Background and Objectives: Psoriasis is an auto immune skin disease which afflicts skin by the red plaques that usually are accompanied the silvery-white scales. Various medical treatments are used for this disease that have different impacts on the patients, but there is no definite cure for the disease. The PASI standard is employed to measure the effectiveness of the treatments. It includes four parameters: namely Area, Erythem, Scaliness and skin Thickness. The Area parameter in PASI standard usually is measured by physicians through subjective clinical observations, which are imprecise and boring act and in some cases it leads to diverse results.Materials and Methods: This paper presents a computer-based semiautomatic method to measure the Area parameter in PASI standard. In the proposed method, the user selects a threshold value for the Cr component in YCbCr color space to differentiate the plaques from the skin.Result: This method has the advantage over the previous methods, that is measuring of plaques with silverywhite and plaques of hairy skins and tiny plaques besides simple plaques (i.e., scale-less plaques).

Background: Psoriasis is a skin disease which has genetical origin. In this disease, skin is covered by red plaques and silvery-white scales. PASI standard provides a method for measuring psoriasis severity by evaluating lesion area and three other parameters.Material and Methods: To determine the lesion area on the skin, we have developed an automatic method for segmentation of the plaques. The method isolates healthy and healed skin areas from lesion areas by an edge detection method. We customized the canny edge detection method in CIELAB color space to isolate the plaques from skin.Result: Moreover the simulation results indicate that the proposed method is able to determine lesion areas with accuracy higher than 92 percent for 37 out of 40 cases.Discussion: The advantage of this method is that it can find lesion area in noisy body, face and can remove the hair, eyes and mouth artifacts. Hence, the proposed method is superior to the previous methods and can be effectively used in automatic measuring of the lesion area in psoriasis patients.

Introduction: Identification and promotion of diagnostic methods has been a continuous effort to reduce disease and its complications and reduce costs associated with treatment. Despite all these efforts and improving our knowledge of diseases and diagnostic tools, pediatric appendicitis remains part of the diagnostic challenge in the surgical field. The aim of this is to compare the two diagnostic criteria of appendicitis (Children's Appendicitis Score [PAS] Versus Pediatric Appendicitis Score [CAS]) and evaluation of the diagnostic features of them. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted on all children admitted to the hospital's emergency center with a possible diagnosis of appendicitis (270 patients) during 2018 and 2019 at Tabriz Pediatric Hospital. Based on the clinical examinations and para-clinical findings some of the patients were underwent the surgical intervention (220 cases) and some discharged and followed up for a period of 2 and 4 weeks later (50 cases). The data were analyzed through SPSS ver. 16 software. Results: The results of the present study indicated that if CAS was associated with ultrasound, the specificity of these criteria would improve and could be more acceptable compared with the PAS. In addition, it was revealed that WBC≥ 11000, as well as PMN≥ 65% and guarding were very specific for diagnosis and complication of acute appendicitis. There was a significant relationship between US findings and pathology reports (P<0. 05). Conclusion: In conclusion, the CAS criteria were more sensitive and the PAS was more specific in diagnosing pediatric acute appendicitis.

Background and aim: Psoriasis is a chronic common condition of the skin that is still resistant to many therapies. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effect of pyrithione zinc in emollient base and comparing with the effect of emollient alone in the treatment of psoriasis.Methods: This randomized double blind clinical trial study was performed on psoriasis patients involved less than 10% of body skin areas. Patients were randomly allocated to one of two treatment groups. Group A was treated with topical emollient cream containing 0.25% pyrithione zinc and group B was treated with topical emollient cream alone twice per day for 3 months. Severity of induration, erythema, and scaling were assessed based on the psoriasis Area Severity Index (PASI) score. Data obtained from both groups were analyzed using student-t test and paired-t test.Results: From the total number of participants, 30 patients in group A and 30 patients in group B completed the study. The mean PASI score in group A before and after treatment were 3.4±1.8 and 0.9±1.3, respectively (P<0.01). The mean PASI score in group B before and after treatment were 4.3±2 and 3.9±1.3, respectively (P>0.05). Mean PASI score reduction was 2.4±2 in group A and 0.4±0.1 in group B (P<0.01). The percent of decrease in mean PASI score was 70.5% in group A and 9.3% in group B.Conclusion: Topical formulation of pyrithione zinc in an emollient base can be used as a safe and effective treatment for psoriasis.

Background: Dyslipidemia has been reportedly associated with an increased risk of atherosclerosis among psoriatic patients. Dietary intake can be a key factor in the pathophysiology of psoriasis. Herein, we assessed serum lipid profile and dietary intake in psoriatic patients, in comparison with healthy subjects. Methods: In this case-control study, 45 psoriatic patients and 43 healthy controls were evaluated. We estimated the macro/micronutrient intakes and energy, using a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). Anthropometric parameters and serum levels of triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoproteins (HDL), low-density lipoproteins (LDL), and very low-density lipoproteins were assessed. The case group was categorized by severity measured by PASI score (mild<10, moderate 10-20, severe >20). Diet plan 6. 0 was used to analyze FFQs and data were analyzed in SPSS 16. 0, with p<0. 05 considered significant. Results: The case group had markedly higher body mass index (BMI), LDL, and cholesterol and significantly lower HDL compared with controls (p<0. 05). Carbohydrate, energy, fat intakes were significantly higher in cases, while folate, fiber, and vitamin E intakes were significantly lower in the case group, compared with the control group (p<0. 05). BMI, cholesterol, and triglyceride values and dietary intakes of fiber and vitamin E were significantly associated with severity of psoriasis (p<0. 05). Conclusion: Serum lipid profile and dietary intake are substantially important in psoriasis severity. Therefore, close monitoring of lipid profile and BMI during admission and followup and dietary modification can improve the severity of psoriasis.

Background: Psoriasis is a skin disease which results in red scaly regions in the body. This disease has no well-known definite cure and the proposed medical treatments can only control the disease and reduce its harms. PASI criteria are proposed to measure the effectiveness of the selected treatment on the patients. The PASI criteria consist of four parameters: Area, Erythema, Scaliness and Thickness. The Erythema parameter is usually measured based on subjective methods by the physicians. Subjective measurement of Erythema is time consuming, imprecise and varies if performed by different physicians. Our objective in this research is to propose an automatic objective method to measure Erythema parameter based on image processing techniques.Material and Methods: In our research we employed HSV color space because it has the highest correlation with human perception of colors. We specified the correlated component of HSV representation of the psoriasis patients with Erythema parameter. Consequently we used regression modeling to propose a model for automatic measurement of Erythema parameter using HSV color components. We exploited 56 images from psoriasis patients in our research.Results: The results derived from the proposed method for measurement of Erythema parameter were in accordance with the physicians’ diagnosis in 87% of the cases.Conclusion: The proposed method can be used as a tool for automatic measurement of Erythema parameter from digital images captured from psoriasis patients. Moreover, the measurement can be performed without need to any special device.

Background: Psoriasis is a common chronic skin disease which usually appears as white and silvery spots on the skin. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of berberine on patients with psoriasis.Materials and Methods: This double-blind clinical trial was conducted on 60 psoriasis patients who referred to Imam Khomeini Hospital, Ahvoaz, between July and December 2011. The patients were randomly divided into two equal groups that applied berberine and placebo to the treatment of their lesions twice a day. Lesions severity rate in the patients was assessed 7 times using a Psoriasis Area Severity Index (PASI). Data were analyzed by ANOVA with repeated measurements and Chi-square using SPSS software. Results: After 6 months, severity of lesions showed a significant decrease in the group receiving the berberine cream compared with the placebo group so that the mean PASI score of the group receiving berberine decreased from 3.99 to 2.11 while in the placebo group this decreased from 3.98 to 3.71. Mean difference in PASI score was not significant before receiving the treatment till the third month in berberine and placebo groups, but in the fourth to sixth months it was statistically significant (p=0.013).Conclusion: Berberine cream was more effective than the placebo in reduction of skin lesions of psoriasis patients. Therefore, it is recommended that plant-based drugs, like berberine, be used more besides the main medications of patients.