Abstract Asthma is a complex disease defined by chronic airway inflammation and airflow limitation causing variable respiratory symptoms which include shortness of breath (SOB), wheezing, chest tightness and cough. Asthma guidelines advocate adding a second long acting bronchodilator to medium doses of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) rather using high doses of ICS alone to control moderate to severe persistent asthma. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical outcomes of three medication regimens indicated for Iraqi patients suffering from persistent asthma. This study was interventional randomized clinical study conducted on a sample of adult Iraqi asthmatic patients in Baghdad City. The study composed of three visits distributed over eight weeks; baseline visit followed by first follow up and second follow up visits after four and eight weeks respectively. The study enrolled 78 adult patients with moderate to severe persistent asthma as diagnosed by specialist physician according to patient history and baseline pulmonary function test (PFT) and allocated them randomly to three groups (each group included 26 patients) to receive equivalent medium doses of budesonide inhaler in addition to either formoterol inhaler, oral modified release aminophylline tablets or tiotropium inhaler (first, second and third group respectively). Sixty four patients completed this study. The mean ages of patients were above 35 years with slightly more male predominance. The study groups developed significant increase of peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) and forced vital capacity (FVC) values at the first follow up visit compared to baseline values (p<0.001). Thereafter, the first and third groups achieved significant higher values at the second follow up visit compared to first follow up visit (p<0.001), while second group produced no change. All the groups developed significant improvement of Mini asthma quality of life questionnaire (MiniAQLQ) scores and percentage of symptom free days (SFD) at first follow up visit and continued further significant improvement at the second follow up visit (p<0.001). Generally, between groups comparison according to extent of change of study parameters revealed that third group produced the greatest improvement over the entire study period followed by the first group, whereas the second group was associated with the least extent of improvement. This study concluded that all groups caused significant improvement in study parameters compared to baseline values and also concluded that the third group of inhaled [tiotropium/budesonide] was associated with the highest extent of improvement followed by first group, while the second group was the least.
ABSTRACT
The simulation of groundwater movement has been carried out by using MODFLOW model
in order to show the impact of change of water surface elevation of the Tigris river on layers of
the aquifer system for Nuclear Research Center at Al-Tuwaitha area, in addition to evaluate the
ability of the proposed pumping well to collect groundwater and change the direction of flow at
steady-state. The results of the study indicated that there is a good match between the values of
groundwater levels that calculated in the model and measured in the field, where mean error is
0.09 m.
The study also showed that the increasing of water surface elevation of the
A simple analytical method was used in the present work for the simultaneous quantification of Ciprofloxacin and Isoniazid in pharmaceutical preparations. UV-Visible spectrophotometry has been applied to quantify these compounds in pure and mixture solutions using the first-order derivative method. The method depends on the first derivative spectrophotometry using zero-cross, peak to baseline, peak to peak and peak area measurements. Good linearity was shown in the concentration range of 2 to 24 μg∙mL-1 for Ciprofloxacin and 2 to 22 μg∙mL-1 for Isoniazid in the mixture, and the correlation coefficients were 0.9990 and 0.9989 respectively using peak area mode. The limits of detection (LOD) and limits of quantification (LOQ) wer
... Show MoreIn the present work, Uranium (238U), Thorium (232Th) and Potassium (40K) specific activity concentration in (Bq/kg) was measured in five different types for wheat flours that are available in the Iraqi markets. The gamma spectrometry method with an NaI (Tl) detector has been used for radiometric measurements. Calculations of radium equivalent activity, annual effective dose equivalent, external hazard index (Hex), internal hazard index (Hin), representing gamma index and gamma dose rate in all flour samples were 17.98132 Bq/kg, 0.0100334, 0.04502, 0.04857, 0.06872, 0.125883 and 8.181244 respectively. It is found that the average of specific activity concentration of wheat flour sam
... Show MoreObjective : The study was carried out to construct an initial assessment documentation tool for nursing
recording system in Coronary Care Unit.
Methodology : A descriptive, purposive sample of (65) nurses was selected from CCU of main
teaching hospitals (Al Karama, Al Kindy, Al Kadimia, Al Yarmmok, Baghdad teaching hospital, Ibn
Al Naffis hospital) and Ibn-Al betar hospital in Baghdad city from the 15th of April 2004 to the 15th of
April 2006.
The instrument was constructed and comprised of two sections: section one included the
nurses' demographic characteristic; section two was the initial assessment documentation tool that
contained (2) parts including: General information form and the initial assessment form.
In this study, condensation polymerization was used to synthesize a number of novel liquid crystal polymers with 1,3,4-oxadiazole rings based on melamine. The new synthesized polymers were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1HNMR) spectroscopy. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and optical polarization microscopy (OPM) were used to investigate their liquid crystalline properties. The results demonstrated that throughout a wide temperature range, most of the polymers exhibited columnar (CohX) and nematic (N) liquid crystalline phases.
This paper presents the first data for bremsstrahlung buildup factor (BBUF) produced by the complete absorption of Y-91 beta particles in different materials via the Monte Carlo simulation method. The bremsstrahlung buildup factors were computed for different thicknesses of water, concrete, aluminum, tin and lead. A single relation between the bremsstrahlung buildup factor BBUF with both the atomic number Z and thickness X of the shielding material has been suggested.
In this work, the fusion cross section , fusion barrier distribution and the probability of fusion have been investigated by coupled channel method for the systems 46Ti+64Ni, 40Ca+194Pt and 40Ar+148Sm with semi-classical and quantum mechanical approach using SCF and CCFULL Fortran codes respectively. The results for these calculations are compared with available experimental data. The results show that the quantum calculations agree better with experimental data, especially bellow the Coulomb barrier, for the studied systems while above this barrier, the two codes reproduce the data.