Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer in Iraq and the United Kingdom. While the disease is frequently diagnosed among middleaged Iraqi women at advanced stages accounting for the second cause of cancer-related deaths, breast cancer often affects elderly British women yielding the highest survival of all registered malignancies in the UK. Objective: To compare the clinical and pathological profiles of breast cancer among Iraqi and British women; correlating age at diagnosis with the tumor characteristics, receptor-defined biomarkers and phenotype patterns. Methods: This comparative retrospective study included the clinical and pathological characteristics of (1,940) consecutive female patients who were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer from 2014 to 2016 in Iraq (Medical City Teaching Hospital, Baghdad: 635 cases) and UK (John Radcliffe, Oxford and Queen's, BHR University Hospitals: 1,305 cases). The studied parameters in both groups comprised the age of the patient at the time of diagnosis, breast cancer histologic type, grade, tumor size, lymph node status, clinical stage at presentation, Estrogen Receptor (ER), Progesterone Receptor (PR) and HER2 positive tumor contents and the receptor defined breast cancer surrogate subtypes. Results: The Iraqi patients were significantly younger than their British counterparts and exhibited higher trend to present at advanced stages; reflected by larger size tumors and frequent lymph node involvement compared to the British (p<0.00001). They also had worse receptor-defined breast cancer subtypes manifested by higher rates of hormone receptor (ER/PR) negative, HER2 positive tumor contents, Triple Positive and Triple Negative phenotypes (p<0.00001). Excluding HER2 status, the significant differences in the clinical and tumor characteristics between the two populations persisted after adjusting for age among patients younger than 50 years. Conclusion: The remarkable differences in the clinical and tumor characteristics of breast cancer between the Iraqi and British patients suggest heterogeneity in the underlying biology of the tumor which is exacerbated in Iraq by the dilemma of delayed diagnosis. The significant ethnic disparities in breast cancer profiles recommend the prompt strengthening of the national cancer control plan in Iraq as a principal approach to the management of the disease.
The high carbon dioxide emission levels due to the increased consumption of fossil fuels has led to various environmental problems. Efficient strategies for the capture and storage of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide are crucial in reducing their concentrations in the environment. Considering this, herein, three novel heteroatom-doped porous-organic polymers (POPs) containing phosphate units were synthesized in high yields from the coupling reactions of phosphate esters and 1,4-diaminobenzene (three mole equivalents) in boiling ethanol using a simple, efficient, and general procedure. The structures and physicochemical properties of the synthesized POPs were established using various techniques. Field emission scanning elect
... Show MoreNon Uniform Illumination biological image often leads to diminish structures and inhomogeneous intensities of the image. Algorithm has been proposed using Morphological Operations different types of structuring elements including (dick, line, square and ball) with the same parameters of (15).To correct the non-uniform illumination and enhancement biological images, the non-uniform background illumination have been removed from image, using (contrast adjustment, histogram equalization and adaptive histogram equalization). The used basic approach to extract the statistical features values from gray level of co-occurrence matrices (GLCM) can show the typical values for features content of biological images that can be in form of shape or sp
... Show MoreThe fall angle of sun rays on the surface of a photovoltaic PV panel and its temperature is negatively affecting the panel electrical energy produced and efficiency. The fall angle problem was commonly solved by using a dual-axis solar tracker that continually maintains the panel orthogonally positioning to the sun rays all day long. This leads to maximum absorption for solar radiation necessary to produce maximum amount of energy and maintain high level of electrical efficiency. To solve the PV panel temperature problem, a Water-Flow Double Glazing WFDG technique has been introduced as a new cooling tool to reduce the panel temperature. In this paper, an integration design of the water glazing system with a dual-axis tracker has been ac
... Show MoreThe present study aims to detect CTX-M-type ESBL from Escherichia coli clinical isolates and to analyze their antibotic susceptibility patterns. One hundred of E. coli isolates were collected from different clinical samples from a tertiary hospital. ESBL positivity was determined by the disk diffusion method. PCR used for amplification of CTX-M-type ESBL produced by E. coli. Out of 100 E. coli isolates, twenty-four isolates (24%) were ESBL-producers. E. coli isolated from pus was the most frequent clinical specimen that produced ESBL (41.66%) followed by urine (34.21%), respiratory (22.23%), and blood (19.05%). After PCR amplification of these 24 isolates, 10 (41.66%) isolates were found to possess CTX-M genes. The CTX-M type ESBL
... Show MoreDyes are extensively water-soluble and toxic chemicals. The disposing of wastewater rich with such chemicals has severely impacted surface water quality (rivers and lakes). In the current study, an anionic dye, methyl orange, were extracted from wastewater fluids using bulk liquid membranes supplemented with an anionic carrier (Aliquat 336 (QCI)). Parameters including solvent type (carbon tetrachloride and chloroform), membrane stirring speed (100-250 rpm), mixing speed of both phases (50-100 rpm), The feed pH (2-12) and implemented temperature (35-60 °C) were thoroughly analyzed to determine the effect of such variables on extraction effectiveness. Furthermore, the effect of methyl orange (10-50 ppm) in the feed stage and NaOH (0
... Show MoreObjectives: The study aimed to assess the needs of nurses' knowledge toward post operative wound care and to constructed health educational program upon nurses who are working in surgical wards, to determine the relation between nurses' knowledge and their demographical characteristic which includes ( age, gender, level of education, number of years experience in the surgical wards, years of experience in nursing service, and number of attending an educational sessions), and to identify the impact of the health educational program on their knowledge through perform post-test every two months after imp
Soil improvement has developed as a realistic solution for enhancing soil properties so that structures can be constructed to meet project engineering requirements due to the limited availability of construction land in urban centers. The jet grouting method for soil improvement is a novel geotechnical alternative for problematic soils for which conventional foundation designs cannot provide acceptable and lasting solutions. The paper's methodology was based on constructing pile models using a low-pressure injection laboratory setup built and made locally to simulate the operation of field equipment. The setup design was based on previous research that systematically conducted unconfined compression testing (U.C.Ts.). Th
... Show MoreThis study investigated the bioethanol production from green algae Chlorella vulgaris depending on its carbohydrate-enriched biomass. Four different phosphorous concentrations were employed to stimulate bioethanol production from Chlorella vulgaris. The impact of various phosphorous values on Chlorella vulgaris growth rate as well as primary product (carbohydrate) were evaluated. High performance liquid chromatography was utilized in this work. The stationary phase was identified as day 14, 12, 10 and 6 in treatments 6, 4, 2 and g/L, respectively. The findings suggest that the treatment without phosphorous addition had the highest record of carbohydrate content (22.64% dry weight) as well as the highest bioethanol yield (20.66% dry weight).
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