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.
The increase globally fossil fuel consumption as it represents the main source of energy around the world, and the sources of heavy oil more than light, different techniques were used to reduce the viscosity and increase mobility of heavy crude oil. this study focusing on the experimental tests and modeling with Back Feed Forward Artificial Neural Network (BFF-ANN) of the dilution technique to reduce a heavy oil viscosity that was collected from the south- Iraq oil fields using organic solvents, organic diluents with different weight percentage (5, 10 and 20 wt.% ) of (n-heptane, toluene, and a mixture of different ratio
... Show MoreAbstract This study investigated the treatment of textile wastewater contaminated with Acid Black 210 dye (AB210) using zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) through adsorption and photocatalytic techniques. ZnO NPs were synthesized using a green synthesis process involving eucalyptus leaves as reducing and capping agents. The synthesized ZnO NPs were characterized using UV-Vis spectroscopy, SEM, EDAX, XRD, BET, Zeta potential, and FTIR techniques. The BET analysis revealed a specific surface area and total pore volume of 26.318 m2/g. SEM images confirmed the crystalline and spherical nature of the particles, with a particle size of 73.4 nm. A photoreactor was designed to facilitate the photo-degradation process. The study investigated the inf
... Show MoreThe purpose of this research was to prepare, characterize, and evaluate the new antimicrobial peptide KSL peptide encapsulated in poly(D,L-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA)composite microspheres. KSL was loaded in poly(acryloyl hydroxyethyl) starch (acHES) micropar-ticles, and then the peptide-containing microparticles were encapsulated in the PLGA matrix by a solvent extraction /evaporation method.
KSL-loaded PLGA microspheres were also prepared without the starch hydrogel microparticle microspheres for comparison study. KSL peptide microspheres were characterized for drug content, surface morphology, microspheres size determination, polymers stability , in vitro microspheres degradation and in vitro release. KSL peptide
... Show MoreThe question of estimation took a great interest in some engineering, statistical applications, various applied, human sciences, the methods provided by it helped to identify and accurately the many random processes.
In this paper, methods were used through which the reliability function, risk function, and estimation of the distribution parameters were used, and the methods are (Moment Method, Maximum Likelihood Method), where an experimental study was conducted using a simulation method for the purpose of comparing the methods to show which of these methods are competent in practical application This is based on the observations generated from the Rayleigh logarithmic distribution (RL) with sample sizes
... Show MoreEpithelial ovarian cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in women. To date, an effective screening tool for ovarian cancer has not been identified Several clinical and biological factors including serum cancer antigen 125 (CA- 125) have been assessed for prognostic and predictive relevance CA-125 is an epithelial marker derived from coelomic epithelium. It is elevated in 90% of advanced ovarian cancers and in 50% of early ovarian cancers while 20% of ovarian cancers have low or no expression of CA- 125 CA-125 concentrations were measured by Mini Vidas test (VIDAS CA125 II / BIOMERIEUX / France). The median CA-125 levels were significantly higher in the sera of ovarian cancer patients than in those with benign tumors an
... Show MoreHydromorphometric analysis as a method is considered one of the most reliable and used methods in solving hydrological problems. Where it is possible to know the volume of runoff and the rest of the elements that enter into the water balance. Geographical Information System and Remote Sensing is the technique that used the hydro-morphometric analysis of the Wadi Al-Mohammadi basin. Wadi Al-Mohammadi, located in the Western Desert, is one of the main valleys that flow into the Euphrates River. It is considered an important basin, because of its many characteristics, including its relatively large area and the amount of water drained through, which is used mainly in watering livestock and agriculture, in addition to industrial purposes suc
... Show MoreSuspicion in the truth that the satisfaction of the student in the criticism of the speech of the poet and the writer to I bin Al-Atheer
Appending is a morphological term which means the addition of one or two letters to a structure to be similar to other structures of well-known abstractor additional nouns and verbs constructions. The goal of appending is to organize what have been expanded linguistically and collect similarities to reduce the syntactic rules. This is because the appended word exists for expanding purposes; however, it has no construction of its own. An appending was included with another construction with mentioning the additional letter. This by itself means that appending as a process is a term that helps organize rather than expand language. Scholars further noticed that the appending letter is not semantically significant, and so it differs from the
... Show MoreThis study was conducted at the College of Education for Pure Sciences (Ibn Al-Haitham), University of Baghdad. The aim of this study was to isolate and diagnose fungi from fish feedstuff samples, and also detection of aflatoxin B1 and ochratoxin A in fish muscles and feedstuffs. Randomly, the samples were collected from some fish farms from Baghdad, Babil, Wasit, Anbar, and Salah al-Din provinces. This study included the collection of 35 feedstuff samples and 70 fish muscle samples, and each of the two fish samples fed on one sample of the feedstuff. The results showed the presence of several genera of different fungi including Aspergillus spp, Mucor spp., Penicillium spp., Yeast spp., Fusarium spp., Rhizopus spp., Scopiolariopsis spp., Ep
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