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.
KE Sharquie, SA Al-Mashhadani, AA Noaimi, WB Al-Zoubaidi, Our Dermatology Online/Nasza Dermatologia Online, 2015 - Cited by 10
teen sites Baghdad are made. The sites are divided into two groups, one in Karkh and the other in Rusafa. Assessing the underground conditions can be occurred by drilling vertical holes called exploratory boring into the ground, obtaining soil (disturbed and undisturbed) samples, and testing these samples in a laboratory (civil engineering laboratory /University of Baghdad). From disturbed, the tests involved the grain size analysis and then classified the soil, Atterberg limit, chemical test (organic content, sulphate content, gypsum content and chloride content). From undisturbed samples, the test involved the consolidation test (from this test, the following parameters can be obtained: initial void ratio eo, compression index cc, swel
... Show MoreThe deficit of the federal budget and the structural imbalances suffered by the Iraqi economy has affected the direction of research towards suggesting steps and mechanisms can be relied upon in the near term to form a broader base of non-oil revenues aimed at achieving a balanced budget, and to proceed to reform the financial situation, In reducing their financial dictates, whether capital or operational, which lead to significant financial and economic consequences. This also requires that the Iraqi political elite have the real will, strategic vision and full awareness that the implementation of these reforms has potential social and economic effects, with long-term measures to be taken. The aim is not only to reform the finan
... Show MoreA numerical method (F.E.)was derived for incompressible viscoelastic materials, the aging and
environmental phenomena especially the temperature effect was considered in this method. A
treatment of incompressibility was made for all permissible values of poisons ratio. A
mechanical model represents the incompressible viscoelastic materials and so the properties can
be derived using the Laplace transformations technique .A comparison was made with the other
methods interested with viscoelastic materials by applying the method on a cylinder of viscoelastic material surrounding by a steel casing and subjected to a constant internal pressure, as well as a comparison with another viscoelastic method and for Asphalt Concrete pro
In this paper, membrane-based computing image segmentation, both region-based and edge-based, is proposed for medical images that involve two types of neighborhood relations between pixels. These neighborhood relations—namely, 4-adjacency and 8-adjacency of a membrane computing approach—construct a family of tissue-like P systems for segmenting actual 2D medical images in a constant number of steps; the two types of adjacency were compared using different hardware platforms. The process involves the generation of membrane-based segmentation rules for 2D medical images. The rules are written in the P-Lingua format and appended to the input image for visualization. The findings show that the neighborhood relations between pixels o
... Show MoreThe research aims to identify the educational plan for the private and public kindergartens. The researchers selected a sample consisted of (59) female teachers for the private kindergartens and (150) female teachers for the public kindergartens in the city of Baghdad. As for the research tool, the two researchers designed a questionnaire to measure the educational plan for the private and public kindergartens. The results revealed that private kindergartens have educational plans that contribute considerably to classroom interaction, the public kindergartens lack for educational plans. In light of the findings of the research, the researchers recommend the following: the need to set up a unified educational plan for the priv
... Show MoreBackground: Autism is a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life. Autism affects the normal development of the brain in the areas of social interaction and communication skills.Objectives: To identify risk factors for Autism among a sample of autistic children in Baghdad city. Type of the study: this is a case – control, study. Methods: This study was conducted during the period of data collection extended from first of November 2010 until the first of April 2011,The total number of children involved was 100children with diagnosis of autism. Handred children who are free from autism were taken as the control sample. Results: there was a significant association between paternal age and
... Show MoreFiber optics technology has shown immense applications in the areas of medicine, telecommunication, and imaging. For these particular applications, it requires fibers with precise cleaving. In this paper, we will demonstrate a quick, simple and efficient cleaving method that can result in a high-quality fiber surface that works well for many fiber-optic applications. The smooth tip and good surface quality obtained on the cleaved surface of optical fiber is demonstrated by using a microscope imaging system and was flat surface with a 900 angle for perpendicular cleavages. The precision cleaver provides smooth and high-quality cleaves on single-fiber surfaces as opposed to the ruby scribe pen. The defects that may occur during the cleaving p
... Show MoreWith the growth of mobile phones, short message service (SMS) became an essential text communication service. However, the low cost and ease use of SMS led to an increase in SMS Spam. In this paper, the characteristics of SMS spam has studied and a set of features has introduced to get rid of SMS spam. In addition, the problem of SMS spam detection was addressed as a clustering analysis that requires a metaheuristic algorithm to find the clustering structures. Three differential evolution variants viz DE/rand/1, jDE/rand/1, jDE/best/1, are adopted for solving the SMS spam problem. Experimental results illustrate that the jDE/best/1 produces best results over other variants in terms of accuracy, false-positive rate and false-negative
... Show MoreFe3O4:Ce thin films were deposited on glass and Si substrates by Pulse Laser Deposition Technique (PLD). Polycrystalline nature of the cubic structure with the preferred orientation of (311) are proved by X-ray diffraction. The nano size of the prepared films are revealed by SEM measurement. Undoped Iron oxide and doped with different concentration of Ce films have direct allowed transition band gap with 2.15±0.1 eV which is confirmed by PL Photoluminescence measurements. The PL spectra consist of the emission band located at two sets of peaks, set (A) at 579±2 nm , and set (B) at 650 nm, respectively when it is excited at an excitation wavelength of 280 nm at room temperature. I-V characteristics have been studied in the dark and under v
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