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.
Piperine, a crystalline alkaloid compound isolated from Piper nigrum, piper longum, and other types of piper, has had many fabulous pharmacological advantages for preventing and treating some specific diseases, such as analgesic, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, antimetastatic, antithyroid, immunomodulatory, antitumor, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, Alzheimer's, and improving the bioavailability of other drugs. However, its potential for clinical use through oral usage is hindered by water solubility and poor bioavailability. The low level of oral bioavailability is caused by low solubility in water and is photosensitive, susceptible to isomerization by UV light, which causes piperine concentration to decrease. Many different
... Show MoreThe Internet of Things (IoT) technology and smart systems are playing a major role in the advanced developments in the world that take place nowadays, especially in multiple privilege systems. There are many smart systems used in daily human life to serve them and facilitate their tasks, such as alarm systems that work to prevent unwanted events or face detection and recognition systems. The main idea of this work is to capture live video using a connected Pi camera, save it, and unlock the electric strike door in several ways; either automatically by displaying a live video connected via USB webcam using a deep learning algorithm of facial recognition and OpenCV or by RFID technology, as well as by detecting abnormal entrance wit
... Show MoreA quantum mechanical description of the dynamics of non-adiabatic electron transfer in metal/semiconductor interfaces can be achieved using simplified models of the system. For this system we can suppose two localized quantum states donor state |D› and acceptor state |A› respectively. Expression of rate constant of electron transfer for metal/semiconductor system derived upon quantum mechanical model and perturbation theory for transition between |ð·âŒª and |ð´âŒª state when the coupling matrix element coefficient is smaller than 0.025eV. The rate of electron transfer for Au/ ZnSe and Au/ZnS interface systems is evaluated with orientation free energy using a Matlap program. The
... Show MoreBackground :Infectious disorders in general have high morbidity and mortality.. CNS infections include many disorders like bacterial meningitis, tuberculous and other subacute and chronic meningitis, viral meningitis, cerebral abscess, spinal cord infections, and others.
Objective: To assess our locality about prevalence of CNS infections , to have more awareness regarding CNS infections, and to try to find the proper way to reduce their prevalence and to treat them in appropriate way.
Method :We revised the records of all the cases of CNS infections excluding cases of spinal cord infections who were admitted in the wards of neuroscience hospital over the previous two years ( from July/2010 to June 2012 ),those were 132 cases.Seaso
A nano-sensor for nitrotyrosine (NT) molecule was found by studying the interactions of NT molecule with new B24N24 nanocages. It was calculated using density functionals in this case. The predicted adsorption mechanisms included physical and chemical adsorption with the adsorption energy of −2.76 to −4.60 and −11.28 to −15.65 kcal mol−1, respectively. The findings show that an NT molecule greatly increases the electrical conductivity of a nanocage by creating electronic noise. Moreover, NT adsorption in the most stable complexes significantly affects the Fermi level and the work function. This means the B24N24 nanocage can detect NT as a Φ–type sensor. The recovery time was determined to be 0.3 s. The sensitivity of pure BN na
... Show MoreA 3D velocity model was created by using stacking velocity of 9 seismic lines and average velocity of 6 wells drilled in Iraq. The model was achieved by creating a time model to 25 surfaces with an interval time between each two successive surfaces of about 100 msec. The summation time of all surfaces reached about 2400 msec, that was adopted according to West Kifl-1 well, which penetrated to a depth of 6000 m, representing the deepest well in the study area. The seismic lines and well data were converted to build a 3D cube time model and the velocity was spread on the model. The seismic inversion modeling of the elastic properties of the horizon and well data was applied to achieve a corrected veloci
... Show MoreIntroduction: Diabetic foot infections are one of the most severe complications of diabetes. This study was aimed to determine the common bacterial isolates of diabetic foot infections and the in vitro antibiotic susceptibility then treatment.
Methods: A swab was taken from the foot ulcer, and the aerobic bacteria were isolated and identified by cultural, microscopic and biochemical test, then by api-20E system. After that their antibiotic susceptibility pattern was determined. Then local and systemic treatment was used to treat the diabetic foot patients.
Results: Bacterial isolates belonging to twelve species were obtained from diabetic foot patients. Gram (-) bacteria were the predominant pathogens in the diabetic foot infection
This paper presents a novel inverse kinematics solution for robotic arm based on artificial neural network (ANN) architecture. The motion of robotic arm is controlled by the kinematics of ANN. A new artificial neural network approach for inverse kinematics is proposed. The novelty of the proposed ANN is the inclusion of the feedback of current joint angles configuration of robotic arm as well as the desired position and orientation in the input pattern of neural network, while the traditional ANN has only the desired position and orientation of the end effector in the input pattern of neural network. In this paper, a six DOF Denso robotic arm with a gripper is controlled by ANN. The comprehensive experimental results proved the appl
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