Background: Brucellosis is a systemic bacterial disease transmitted from animals to humans and involves many organs and tissues. Symptoms of brucellosis are protean and can be similar to many other infectious diseases. None of the symptoms are specific enough to support the clinical diagnosis. The musculoskeletal system is one of the most commonly affected organs. Disease can be present with bursitis, sacroiliitis, peripheral arthritis, osteomyelitis, spondylitis and paraspinal abscess, which among them vertebral osteomyelitis and paraspinal abscess are rare. Objectives: In this study, we aimed to evaluate the prevalence of vertebral osteomyelitis and paraspinal abscess in patients with brucellosis who were admitted to an infectious hospital in Zahedan, Southeastern Iran. Patients and Methods: During 48 months, from December 2008 to October 2012 we evaluated all patients who were referred to infectious clinics (Zahedan, Southeastern Iran) because of fever, myalgia, arthralgia, chronic low back pain, bone pain and had a wright positive test. Blood samples were tested again for 2ME. A titer of more than 1/80 was positive. All patients with low back pain who had a MRI or spine CTScan, which showed a sign of osteomyelitis and/or cold abscess, were included in our study. Results: Among 73 patients with brucellosis (56 males, 17 females; age range 12-69 years), 14 patients (19%; 12 males) had a diagnosis of brucella osteomyelitis. Eleven patients had vertebral osteomyelitis and five showed an abscess next to the involved spine. Patients were treated with a triple regimen including: doxicycline, rifampin and streptomycin, and one patient needed surgery due to pressure effect on the spine. Conclusions: Localized complications of brucellosis such as bone involvement were observed in patients with acute disease or chronic untreated infection. Based on our results, in endemic areas, every patient with low back pain and a positive test for brucella should be evaluated for spinal osteomyelitis.

Background: This study was conducted on patients with tuberculosis (TB), based on regional needs and the outbreaks of the contagious disease, particularly those diagnosed with the smear-positive during 2014 -2016. The regions neighboring this province, low health information, poorly equipped hospitals/medical clinics, high rate of welfare, the illegal entrance of foreigners to the province are necessities that have to be mentioned. Objectives: Spreading awareness of the disease in the province and the examination of possible ways to control and prevent its spreading are the purposes of this study. Methods: First, the information concerning the files of 250 patients with smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis was collected in Zahedan's Tuberculosis Coordinator and the diagnostic criterion for the studied participants was a microscopic observation of the sputum. All patients had a chest X-ray and were examined every two months by an infectious disease specialist who diagnosed them with smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis. As the observations were incomplete, we could not apply the regular methods and SPSS software to estimate the survival probability (function); instead, we used Generalized Turnbull's Estimator (GTE) and R software to calculate the non-parametric conditional probability of the patient's survival and recovery times. For Instance, for the ith person, Li and Ri have been considered based on the last positive result and the first negative result of the disease, respectively. Results: Among 250 studied patients, four patients are right censored and the rest of them are interval censored. The patients' age ranged from 10 to 91 years, the average age of diagnosis in infected males is 58.54 with a standard deviation (SD) of 19.10 years and females was 55.40 with an SD of 18.09 years. During this period there were no major differences between males and females. Moreover, 49.2% of the patients infected via sexual transmission were males and 50.8% of the patients were females. Conclusions: In this study, the patients' weight was considered an effective variable in the evaluation of the survival function (the possibility of conditional survival) and we considered the effect of factors such as sex, the previous diagnosis of diabetes/AIDS, the previous history of being in contact with people with TB disease, and a history of imprisonment on the survival probability. As we can see, all the auxiliary variables mentioned above, are significantly effective in the course of the patient's treatment and recovery (survival) time.