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  Background and objectives: Common cold is the most common disease in children. Young children have an average of 6 to 7 colds each year. Some complications of common cold include: secondary bacterial infections, school absence and excessive cost for treatment. The management of the common cold consists primarily of symptomatic treatment. An effective and safe drug is needed to reduce the duration of common cold ۥ s symptoms in children and reduce subsequent complications. In some studies zinc sulfate has showed an antiviral effect and immune enhancing activity. Therefore this study designed to evaluate the efficacy of zinc sulfate in duration of cold ۥ s symptoms in children.

  Methods: This was a clinical trial study. The subjects were children between 1 - 7 years old with common cold that attended to pediatrics clinic of Arak Amir Kabir Hospital. The study included 112 patients randomized in two groups. One group received zinc sulfate within 10 days and other group didn’t receive this drug. Using a researcher made questionnaire duration of symptoms: rhinorhea and nasal obstruction, cough, sneezing, fever and duration of illness, in both groups were evaluated.

  Results: Consumption of zinc sulfate significantly reduced the mean duration of rhinorhea and nasal obstruction in children with common cold (p < 0.05). Also the mean duration of cough in zinc group was lower than the control group (p < 0.05). Compared to the group that didn’t receive zinc sulfate, the zinc group had shorter mean duration of sneezing (p < 0.05). Also the mean duration of fever in zinc group was shorter than the other group (p < 0.05). The mean duration of illness in patients who had received the zinc sulfate was significantly less than the other group (p <0.05). No side effect was observed in subjects received zinc sulfate.

  Conclusion: According to the results zinc sulfate can be administered with other supportive treatments of common cold, for reduction of symptoms duration and complications in children.

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Background & objectives: In recent years، Computed Tomography (CT scan) has become the Gold Standard for detecting urinary stones. This study was conducted to predict the size of possible passage of ureteral stones based on clinical signs, lab data (e.g. Ultrasounds) in patients with small passable stones and to prevent CT scan, which requires high costs and x-ray exposure.
Methods: In this cross- sectional study, fifty consecutive patients from emergency room who had clinical symptoms of renal colic and urinary tract stones were recruited by simple non-random sampling. After obtaining the primary data, all of them underwent sonography (US), and in those without sings of stone in US، CT scan was performed. Based on the CT scan, the patients were divided into two main groups: 1) patients who had no ureteral stones or had ureteral stones <5mm, and 2) patient who had ureteral stones ≥5mm. All gathered data were analyzed by t-test and chi-square test.
Results: Among our proposed variables, previous history of urinary stone (p=0.05), irritative urinary symptoms (e.g. dysuria, frequency and urgency) (p=0.001), gross hematuria (p=0.049) and degree of hydronephrosis (p=0.029) had statistically significant relationship with the presence, size and spontaneous expulsive potential of ureteral stones.
Conclusion: Based on our results, negative history of urinary stones, absence of irritative urinary symptoms and gross hematuria and absence or mild degree of hydronephrosis in sonography were in favor of small (<5mm) or passable ureteral stones for which CT scan can be omitted.