hepatitis b virus (hbv) infection is the most common cause of end stage liver disease in iran and in golestan province. large-scale population-based prospective cohort studies with long term follow-up are the method of choice to accurately understand the natural course of hbv infection. to date, several studies of hbv epidemiology, natural history, progression to cirrhosis and association with ...

background: helicobacter pylori (hp) is a gram negative, spiral shaped bacterium which colonizes the gastric mucosa and induces gastroduodenal complications varying from mild gastritis with no clinical complications to peptic ulcer diseases and even gastric malignancies. the rate of hp infection is 30-50% in developed countries whereas it has been rated up to 80% of the adult population in deve...

OBJECTIVE The frequent occurrence of inconclusive serology in blood banks and the absence of a gold standard test for Chagas'disease led us to examine the efficacy of the blood culture test and five commercial tests (ELISA, IIF, HAI, c-ELISA, rec-ELISA) used in screening blood donors for Chagas disease, as well as to investigate the prevalence of Trypanosoma cruzi infection among donors with in...

BACKGROUND Chagas disease, caused by Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi), is endemic in Latin-America and is emerging in Spain due to immigration. The vertical transmission rate is around 5%. A routine prenatal screening with serology of all pregnant women from endemic areas is recommended to identify infected newborns, allowing early treatment and cure. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to estima...

Surface serology is an important determinant in Spiroplasma systematics. Reciprocal antigen/antibody reactions between spiroplasmas and individual antisera delineate the 38 described groups and species. However, reciprocal serology is impractical for large-scale studies. This report describes a successful, streamlined polyvalent screening approach used to examine isolates from an environmental ...

Syphilis serology is a basic screening test for the workers who want to go abroad. Many countries reject migrant workers who have reactive syphilis serology. Biological false reactives warrant repeated syphilis serology. We prospectively studied 30 patients (25 males and 5 females) who had biological false reactive VDRL tests (VDRL reactive, confirmatory TPHA negative). Affirmative tests for sy...

BACKGROUND Screening for syphilis with treponemal chemiluminescence immunoassays (CIA) identifies patients with discordant serology who are not identified with traditional screening methods (eg, CIA-positive, rapid plasma regain (RPR)-negative). We sought to describe the clinical characteristics and management of patients with discordant syphilis serology. METHODS From August 2007-October 200...

Manuscript received and accepted: 5 July and 4 October 2008 Editor, hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is an important viral infection. Chronic HBV infection can result in a very serious complication, hepatoma. HBV serology is a basic screening test in laboratory medicine at present. Of several serological parameters, HBs Ag is the suggested parameter for HBV screening. Since this test is easily...