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.
Objective: The study aims to determine the effectiveness of the continuing nursing education
program on nursing staffs knowledge in kidney transplantation unit and to find out the relationship
between nursing staffs knowledge and demographic characteristics (age, gender, education level, and
years of experiences in kidney transplantation unit).
Methodology: A quasiexperemental design (One-group Pretest - Posttest design) was carried out in
kidney transplantation units at Baghdad Teaching Hospitals, from December 2011 to July 2012. A nonprobability
(purposive sample) of (16) nurses were selected from kidney transplant units at Baghdad
teaching hospitals, the choice was based on the study criteria. The data were collec
Poverty phenomenon is very substantial topic that determines the future of societies and governments and the way that they deals with education, health and economy. Sometimes poverty takes multidimensional trends through education and health. The research aims at studying multidimensional poverty in Iraq by using panelized regression methods, to analyze Big Data sets from demographical surveys collected by the Central Statistical Organization in Iraq. We choose classical penalized regression method represented by The Ridge Regression, Moreover; we choose another penalized method which is the Smooth Integration of Counting and Absolute Deviation (SICA) to analyze Big Data sets related to the different poverty forms in Iraq. Euclidian Distanc
... Show MoreA field experiment was carried out during the spring season 2019 and 2020 to obtain a fast, uniform, and high field emergence ratio of maize seeds under a wide range of environmental conditions. Randomize complete block design in the split-plot arrangement was used with three replications. The first factor in the main plots was cultivars (5018, Baghdad3 and Sumer). The second factor in the sub-plots was seeds soaking with ascorbic and citric acids (100 mg L−1) each and humic (1 ml L−1) in addition to control treatment (seeds soaking with distilled water only). Results showed the superiority of soaking with humic acid significantly, as means of characteristics of field emergence in both seasons, respectively, were as follows: Last day of
... Show MoreAqueous Two Phase System (ATPS) or liquid-liquid extraction is used in biotechnology to recover valuable compounds from raw sources. In Aqueous Two-Phase Systems, many factors influence the Partition coefficient, K, (which is the ratio of protein concentration in the top phase to that in the bottom phase) and the Recovery percentage (Rec%). In this research, two systems of ATPS were used: first, polyethylene glycol (PEG) 4000/Sodium citrate (SC), and the second, PEG8000/ Sodium phosphate (SPH), for the extraction of Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA). The behavior of Rec% and K of pure (BSA) in ATPS has been investigated throughout the study by the effects of five parameters: temperature, concentration of polyethylene glycol (P
... Show MorePolymer metal complexes of poly ethylene glycol acetal and Ag (I), Cu (II), Ni (II), Mn (II), Co (III) and Hg (II) were prepared from the reaction of PEG with aldehyde derived fromErythro-ascorbic acid (pentulosono-ɣ-lactone-2, 3- enedianisoate). All these compounds were characterized by Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) and FTIR spectra and aldehyde was also characterized by (U.V-Vis), 1HNMR,13CNMR, and mass spectra. It has been established that, the polymer and its metal complexes showedgood activities against four pathogenic bacteria (Escherichia coli , Klebsiellapneumonae,Staphylococcusaureus, Staphylococcus Albus) and two fungal (Aspergillus Niger,Yeast). The polymer metal complexes showed higher activity than the free polymer.Theorder
... Show MoreMany researchers consider Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engine mode as a promising alternative to combustion in Spark Ignition and Compression Ignition Engines. The HCCI engine runs on lean mixtures of fuel and air, and the combustion is produced from the fuel autoignition instead of ignited by a spark. This combustion mode was investigated in this paper. A variable compression ratio, spark ignition engine type TD110 was used in the experiments. The tested fuel was Iraqi conventional gasoline (ON=82).
The results showed that HCCI engine can run in very lean equivalence ratios. The brake specific fuel consumption was reduced about 28% compared with a spark ignition engine. The experimental tests showed that the em
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