Periodontitis is one of the most prevalent bacterial diseases affecting man with up to 90% of the global population affected. Its severe form can lead to the tooth loss in 10-15% of the population worldwide. The disease is caused by a dysbiosis of the local microbiota and one organism that contributes to this alteration in the bacterial population is Prophyromonas gingivalis. This organism possesses a range of virulence factors that appear to contribute to its growth and survival at a periodontal site amongst which is its ability to invade oral epithelial cells. Such an invasion strategy provides a means of evasion of host defence mechanisms, persistence at a site and the opportunity for dissemination to other sites in the mouth. However, p

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, inflammatory, immune mediated disease of the central nervous system, mostly affecting young adults with mean age of 30 years, twice as high in women compared to men. The etiology of MS is not fully elucidated. MS symptoms are directly related to demyelination and axonal loss, along with other psychological symptoms, can result in functional limitations, disability and reduced quality of life (QoL).  The QoL assessments in patients with a chronic disease may contribute to improving treatment and could even be of prognostic value. The goals  of this study were  to  compare the QoL of  Iraqi patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS),using three different diseas

Breast cancer (BC) is one of the most frequently observed malignancy in females worldwide. Today, tamoxifen (TAM) is considered as the highly effective therapy for treatment of breast tumors. Oxidative stress has implicated strongly in the pathophysiology of malignancies. This study aimed to investigate the changes in the levels of oxidants and antioxidants in patients with newly diagnosed and TAM-treated BC. Sixty newly diagnosed and 60 TAM-treated women with BC and 50 healthy volunteers were included in this study. Parameters including total oxidant capacity (TOC), total antioxidant capacity (TAC), and catalase (CAT) activity were determined before and after treatment with TAM. The serum levels of TOC and oxidative stress index (OSI) were

Background: The ideal maxillofacial prosthesis should have fine and thin boundaries that bindwith the surrounding facial structures and possess high tear strength.This study aims to determinethe best percentages of nanofiller (TiO2) and intrinsic pigment (silicone functional intrinsic) thatcould be mixed in as additives to improve the tear strength of Cosmesil M511 andVST50F siliconeelastomers with the least effect on their hardness.Materials and Methods: In this in vitro experimental study, a total of 80 samples, 40 for eachelastomer, were fabricated. Each elastomer sample was split into two equal groups to test for tearstrength and Shore A hardness. Each group consisted of 20 samples, including 10 control sampleswithout additives and 10 e

Aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) is a ligand-activated transcription factor and 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) is a potent ligand for AhR and a known carcinogen. While AhR activation by TCDD leads to significant immunosuppression, how this translates into carcinogenic signal is unclear. Recently, we demonstrated that activation of AhR by TCDD in naïve C57BL6 mice leads to massive induction of myeloid derived-suppressor cells (MDSCs). In the current study, we investigated the role of the gut microbiota in TCDD-mediated MDSC induction. TCDD caused significant alterations in the gut microbiome, such as increases in Prevotella and Lactobacillus, while decreasing Sutterella and Bacteroides. Fecal transplants from TCDD-treated

           In this paper, the homotopy perturbation method (HPM) is presented for treating a linear system of second-kind mixed Volterra-Fredholm integral equations. The method is based on constructing the series whose summation is the solution of the considered system. Convergence of constructed series is discussed and its proof is given; also, the error estimation is obtained. Algorithm is suggested and applied on several examples and the results are computed by using MATLAB (R2015a). To show the accuracy of the results and the effectiveness of the method, the approximate solutions of some examples are compared with the exact solution by computing the absolute errors.