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.
Increasing the variety of products that are being designed with sculptured surfaces, efficient machining of these surfaces has become more important in many manufacturing industries. The objective of the present work is the investigation of milling parameters for the sculptured surfacesthat effecting of surface roughness during machining of Al-alloy. The machining operation implemented on C-TEK CNC milling machine. The influence of the selected variables on the chosen characteristics have been accomplished using Taguchi design approach, also ANOVA had been utilized to evaluate the contributionsof each parameter on proc
... Show MoreStripping is one of the major distresses within asphalt concrete pavements caused due to penetration of water within the interface of asphalt-aggregate matrix. In this work, one grade of asphalt cement (40-50) was mixed with variable percentages of three types of additives (fly ash, fumed silica, and phosphogypsum) to obtained an modified asphalt cement to resist the effect of stripping phenomena .The specimens have been tested for physical properties according to AASHTO. The surface free energy has been measured by using two methods namely, the wilhelmy technique and the Sessile drop method according to NCHRP-104
procedures. Samples of asphalt concrete using different asphalt cement and modified asphalt cement percentages(4.1,4.6 an
The research discusses the mechanism for analyzing the salary scale in the public sector through an analysis of grades, their stages, occupants and their financial entitlements, and the extent to which the information obtained for their investment in strategic planning, conducting correction and treatment can be used. The salaries of the employees in them, whose number is (1117) employees, to be a field of research, as the salary structure in it for the year 2019 was analyzed by relying on a number of statistical tools in the analysis process, including the arithmetic circles, upper limits, minimum limits and percentage, and with
... Show MoreIn this article, we will present a quasi-contraction mapping approach for D iteration, and we will prove that this iteration with modified SP iteration has the same convergence rate. At the other hand, we prove that the D iteration approach for quasi-contraction maps is faster than certain current leading iteration methods such as, Mann and Ishikawa. We are giving a numerical example, too.