BACKGROUND The World Health Organization recommends the surveillance of influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) to respond effectively to both seasonal influenza epidemics and pandemics. In Korea, the "Hospital-based Influenza Morbidity and Mortality (HIMM)" surveillance system has been operated to monitor ILI and SARI occurrences. MATERIALS AND METHODS A mu...

BACKGROUND Pregnant women and infants under 6 months are at risk of influenza-related complications. Limited information exists on their community burden of respiratory viruses. METHODS AND FINDINGS This prospective, observational open cohort study was conducted in Baganuur district, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia during 2013/14 and 2014/15 influenza seasons. Influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe ac...

BACKGROUND Knowing the national disease burden of severe influenza in low-income countries can inform policy decisions around influenza treatment and prevention. We present a novel methodology using locally generated data for estimating this burden. METHODS AND FINDINGS This method begins with calculating the hospitalized severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) incidence for children <5 years...

The image authentication system SARI proposed by Lin and Chang passes JPEG compression and rejects other malicious manipulations. Some vulnerabilities of the system have been reported recently. In this paper, we propose two new attacks that can compromise the SARI system. The first attack is called a histogram attack which modifies DCT coefficients yet maintains the same relationship between an...

BACKGROUND The term severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) encompasses a heterogeneous group of respiratory illnesses. Grading the severity of SARI is currently reliant on indirect disease severity measures such as respiratory and heart rate, and the need for oxygen or intensive care. With the lungs being the primary organ system involved in SARI, chest radiographs (CXRs) are potentially use...

BACKGROUND The burden of the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza might be underestimated if detection of the virus is mandated to diagnose infection. Using an alternate approach, we propose that a much higher pandemic burden was experienced in our institution. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Consecutive patients (n = 2588) presenting to our hospital with influenza like illness (ILI) or severe acute...

The aim of this study was identification of fungi in indoor and outdoor of asthmatic patients home environment. Opened plates (containing of Malt extract agar media) were used for isolation of fungi in the air of indoor (n=360) and outdoor (n=180) of 90 asthmatic patients home living in the city of Sari at the level of breathing height. Plates were incubated in room temperature for 7-14 days. T...

HIGH RISK GENOTYPES AMONG IRANIAN HEALTHY WOMEN: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS Mina Malary, Mahmood Moosazadeh, Zeinab Hamzehgardeshi, Mahdi Afshari, Iman Moghaddasifar, Amin Afsharimoghadam. Student Research Committee, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran; Assistant Professor, Health Sciences Research Center, Faculty of Health, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences...

BACKGROUND Syndromic surveillance of severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) is important to assess seriousness of disease as recommended by WHO for influenza. In 2015 the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) started to collaborate with a private hospital network to develop a SARI surveillance system using case-based data on ICD-10 codes. This first-time description of the system shows its applicatio...

background and purpose: most traditional tea shop owners use a bowl to wash tea cups in sari city (north of iran). there are more than 140 traditional tea shops in the city. unfortunately most people drinking at these shops as well as health authorities do not pay attention to the health criteria of the shop. the objective of this study was to examin the tea cups washing water of traditional te...