Background: Legionella pneumophila (L. pneumophila) is gram-negative bacterium, which causes Legionnaires’ disease as well as Pontiac fever. Objective: To determine the frequency of Legionella pneumophila in pneumonic patients, to determine the clinical utility of diagnosing Legionella pneumonia by urinary antigen testing (LPUAT) in terms of sensitivity and specificity, to compares the results obtained from patients by urinary antigen test with q Real Time PCR (RT PCR) using serum samples and to determine the frequency of serogroup 1 and other serogroups of L. pneumophila. Methods: A total of 100 pneumonic patients (community acquired pneumonia) were enrolled in this study during a period between October 2016 to April 2017; 92 samples were collected from patients attended and admitted to Al-Imamein Al-Kadhimein Medical City and 8 samples from those in the (Center of Kidney Diseases and Transplantation) in the Medical City of Baghdad. All patients were under therapy with antibiotics. Serum and urine specimens were obtained from all patients; urine samples were processed for urinary antigen test (rapid test). Serum samples were collected and submitted to DNA extraction for detection of L. pneumophila mip gene by q RT PCR assay. Results: The percentage of L. pneumophila in two hospitals in Bagdad was 30%. Of these 26% was serogroup 1 detected by urinary antigen testing (UAT). In the other hand, 23% of samples were positive by q RT PCR based mip gene, of these 19 % were serogroup 1 and 4% were another serogroup. The sensitivity of UAT is high (P value < 0.001), which means statistically highly significance than q RT PCR. Conclusion: LPUAT is a rapid tool for early diagnosis of Legionella infection, which highlights the need of using this test in hospitals and health institutions and there is a high prevalence of L. pneumophila in Iraq that refer to the necessity of considering this microorganism point of view in future studies for detection and treatment in pneumonic patients. Keywords: L. pneumophila, mip gene, quantitative real time PCR, urinary antigen. Citation: Gauad SA, Abdulrahman TR, Muhamad AK, Jawad AA, Hassan JS. Clinical utility of urinary antigen test and molecular method for detection of Legionella pneumophila. Iraqi JMS. 2018; 16(2): 207-215. doi: 10.22578/IJMS.16.2.13
In this work a fragile watermarking scheme is presented. This scheme is applied to digital color images in spatial domain. The image is divided into blocks, and each block has its authentication mark embedded in it, we would be able to insure which parts of the image are authentic and which parts have been modified. This authentication carries out without need to exist the original image. The results show the quality of the watermarked image is remaining very good and the watermark survived some type of unintended modification such as familiar compression software like WINRAR and ZIP
Although text document images authentication is difficult due to the binary nature and clear separation between the background and foreground but it is getting higher demand for many applications. Most previous researches in this field depend on insertion watermark in the document, the drawback in these techniques lie in the fact that changing pixel values in a binary document could introduce irregularities that are very visually noticeable. In this paper, a new method is proposed for object-based text document authentication, in which I propose a different approach where a text document is signed by shifting individual words slightly left or right from their original positions to make the center of gravity for each line fall in with the m
... Show MoreEye Detection is used in many applications like pattern recognition, biometric, surveillance system and many other systems. In this paper, a new method is presented to detect and extract the overall shape of one eye from image depending on two principles Helmholtz & Gestalt. According to the principle of perception by Helmholz, any observed geometric shape is perceptually "meaningful" if its repetition number is very small in image with random distribution. To achieve this goal, Gestalt Principle states that humans see things either through grouping its similar elements or recognize patterns. In general, according to Gestalt Principle, humans see things through genera
... Show MoreThe aim of this study is to investigate the role of prodigiosin on P. aeruginosa' s biofilm genes involved in the pathogenicity and persistency of the bacteria; Materials and methods: Gram negative bacterial isolates were taken from burn and wounds specimen obtained from some of Baghdad hospitals. Forty six isolates were identified as Pseudomonas aeruginosa and four isolates as Serratia marcescens by using biochemical tests and VITEK 2 compact system. Susceptibility test was performed for all P. aeruginosa isolates, the results showed that 100% were resistant to Amikacin and 98% were sensitive to Meropenem. Resistant isolates were tested for biofilm formation; the strong and moderate isolates (17) were detected by PCR for AlgD gene
... Show MoreBackground: the primary objective for many researches carried out in dental implantology was to reduce the period needed for functional implant loading, simvastatin (cholesterol lowering medication) had many pleiotropic effects, one of which was increasing bone density around titanium implants (1) and subsequently establishing faster osseointegrated dental implants (2,3). This study aims to reduce the period of time needed to establish secondary stability of dental implant measured in ISQ (Implant Stability Quotient) by investigating the effect of orally administered simvastatin on bone. Materials and methods: simvastatin tablets (40mg/day for three months) were administered orally for 11 healthy women aged (40-51) years old who received 1
... Show MoreBackground: Tobacco smoking and tuberculosis (TB) are two major public health problems; Associations between smoking and tuberculosis including death from tuberculosis have been reported , A reduction in smoking could be expected to have a significant impact on TB incidence and prevalence .
Objectives: to assess the effect of smoking on tuberculosis.
Methods: This study was conducted from June 2011 to June 2012 in 200 patients, adult ( aged 17 years and more), newly diagnosed patients of pulmonary tuberculosis, at the chest and Respiratory Disease Specialized Center in Baghdad. Demographic data, presenting symptoms, data on smoking, and recurrence of disease were compared. Information on smoking status, tobacco smoking was collecte
This research aims to develop new spectrophotometric analytical method to determine drug compound Salbutamol by reaction it with ferric chloride in presence potassium ferricyanide in acid median to formation of Prussian blue complex to determine it by uv-vis spectrophotmetric at wavelengths rang(700-750)nm . Study the optimal experimental condition for determination drug and found the follows: 1- Volume of(10M) H2SO4 to determine of drug is 1.5 ml . 2- Volume and concentration of K3Fe(CN)6 is 1.5 ml ,0.2% . 3- Volume and concentration of FeCl3 is 2.5ml , 0.2%. 4- Temperature has been found 80 . 5- Reaction time is 15 minute . 6- Order of addition is (drug + K3Fe(CN)6+ FeCl3 + acid) . Concentration rang (0.025-5 ppm) , limit detecti
... Show MoreIn this paper we proposes the philosophy of the Darwinian selection as synthesis method called Genetic algorithm ( GA ), and include new merit function with simple form then its uses in other works for designing one of the kinds of multilayer optical filters called high reflection mirror. Here we intend to investigate solutions for many practical problems. This work appears designed high reflection mirror that have good performance with reduction the number of layers, which can enable one to controlling the errors effect of the thickness layers on the final product, where in this work we can yield such a solution in a very shorter time by controlling the length of the chromosome and optimal genetic operators . Res
... Show MoreBecause of the quick growth of electrical instruments used in noxious gas detection, the importance of gas sensors has increased. X-ray diffraction (XRD) can be used to examine the crystal phase structure of sensing materials, which affects the properties of gas sensing. This contributes to the study of the effect of electrochemical synthesis of titanium dioxide (TiO2) materials with various crystal phase shapes, such as rutile TiO2 (R-TiO2NTs) and anatase TiO2 (A-TiO2NTs). In this work, we have studied the effect of voltage on preparing TiO2 nanotube arrays via the anodization technique for gas sensor applications. The results acquired from XRD, energy dispersion spectro
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