The frequency of HHV-8 infection in otherwise healthy blood donors as well as renal allograft recipients living in Iran.

Background: Different reports from Middle East countries demonstrated Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) in transplant population. This vascular malignancy occurs mostly among immunocompromised individuals. Human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) appears to be the causative factor for the development of this neoplasm.

Asymptomatic Left Bundle Branch Block Predicts New-Onset Congestive Heart Failure and Death From Cardiovascular Diseases.

Background: Left bundle branch block (LBBB) has been proposed as a risk factor for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. We sought to characterize the strength of these associations in a population without preexisting clinical heart disease.

Methods: The association between LBBB and new-onset congestive heart failure (CHF) or death from cardiovascular diseases was examined in 1,688 participants enrolled in the SPPARCS study who were free of known CHF or previous myocardial infarction.

Prominent bladder cancer risk factors in Iran.

Several risk factors have been suggested for transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the bladder (BC). Since it seems that some factors have more prominent role over the others in our region, we conducted the present case-control study with 692 bladder cancer (BC) patients versus 692 healthy controls (262 women versus 1,122 men in total) matched on the basis of gender and age (± 5 years). The enrolled cases had confirmed TCC of bladder.