Jorjani Biomedicine Journal

Background & Objective: Diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis requires high utilization of resources and costs and assessing the utilization of health care resources is always important for budgeting and long-term planning in a highly dynamic health care system. This study aimed to investigate the resources and service utilization pattern of patients with smear positive tuberculosis in the Azadshahr district, Golestan province.
Methods: In this retrospective and cross-sectional study, all new patients with smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis who were registered and successfully completed their treatment at the health network of Azadshahr County, from April 2013 to October 2015, were entered to the study (45 patients). Data were collected from the patients’ records at the health care facilities, telephone interviews with patients and registry book of patients in the tuberculosis unite of health network.
Results: The average duration of treatment and DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short-Course) implementation was 195 and 158 days per patient, respectively.  The average drug consumption was 741 pills and the average number of X-ray and laboratory tests (smear test) was 1.7 and 4.4 per patient, respectively. Each patient had been visited on average 8.8 times by physician and 27% of patients were hospitalized, their average length of stay was 1.8 days.
Conclusion: Our findings showed that the utilization pattern of resources and services in patients with tuberculosis was approximately consistent with protocols developed by World Health Organization (WHO) and Ministry of Health of Iran often.

Tuberculosis (TB) has always been represented as a constant and serious public health challenge throughout human history due to its intensive epidemiological, clinical, and social implications. Risk factors for TB are very important and lack of attention to these parameters can lead to poor therapeutic results. The risk factors for TB in various studies in modern medicine are described. Avicenna, the great Persian scientist described TB in his book “Canon of Medicine” in a chapter related to pulmonary diseases along with its symptoms and treatment. In addition, according to this scientist, there are risk factors that, if present in a person, make him prone to TB.
It seems that many of the factors mentioned by the scholars of Persian Traditional Medicine (PTM) are not currently among the risk factors for TB in modern medicine and have not been studied yet. If this hypothesis is supported and confirmed by future research in modern medicine, the recommendations of PTM can be a significant help in controlling the consequences of this disease.

Background: Genetic polymorphisms are predictors of the immune response and susceptibility to certain infectious diseases, including pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). We evaluated the association of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP1) (-2581 A/G) and interferon-gamma (IFNγ) (+874 T/A) polymorphisms with susceptibility to pulmonary TB in an Iranian population.
Methods: A total of 124 patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and 244 healthy subjects (121 related normal controls and 123 unrelated subjects) were included. The MCP1 polymorphic region (-2518 A/G) was genotyped by PCR-RFLP, while ARMS-PCR was used to amplify and detect IFNγ (+874 T/A). SNPStats and SPSS v. 20 were used for the statistical analysis of the data.
Results: The comparison of MCP1 (-2518 A/G) alleles and genotypes in TB patients and healthy subjects showed no significant association in all the constructed heredity models. No association was observed between TB patients and normal subjects in all the constructed inheritance models for IFNγ (+874 T/A) alleles and genotypes.
Conclusion: Due to the lack of association between MCP1 (-2518 A/G) and IFNγ (874 T/A) polymorphisms and susceptibility to PT in our study and the conflicting results of some previous studies, further clinical and molecular research is needed to clarify the role of the studied polymorphisms in the pathogenesis of tuberculosis.