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
The paper aims is to solve the problem of choosing the appropriate project from several service projects for the Iraqi Martyrs Foundation or arrange them according to the preference within the targeted criteria. this is done by using Multi-Criteria Decision Method (MCDM), which is the method of Multi-Objective Optimization by Ratios Analysis (MOORA) to measure the composite score of performance that each alternative gets and the maximum benefit accruing to the beneficiary and according to the criteria and weights that are calculated by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The most important findings of the research and relying on expert opinion are to choose the second project as the best alternative and make an arrangement acco
... Show MoreTo obtain the approximate solution to Riccati matrix differential equations, a new variational iteration approach was proposed, which is suggested to improve the accuracy and increase the convergence rate of the approximate solutons to the exact solution. This technique was found to give very accurate results in a few number of iterations. In this paper, the modified approaches were derived to give modified solutions of proposed and used and the convergence analysis to the exact solution of the derived sequence of approximate solutions is also stated and proved. Two examples were also solved, which shows the reliability and applicability of the proposed approach.
Background: COVID-19 is a disease that started in Wuhan/China in late 2019 and continued through 2020 worldwide. Scientists worldwide continue to research to find vaccines, treatments, and medication for this disease. Studies also conenue to find the pathogenicity and epidemiology mechanisms. Materials and Methods: In this work, we analyzed cases obtained from Alshifaa center in Baghdad/Iraq for 23/2/2020-31/5/2020 with total instances of 797, positive cases of 393, and death cases of 30. Results: Results showed that the highest infection cases were among people aged between 41-45. Also, it was found that males' number of cases was more than females. In contrast, death cases were significantly higher in males than females. It was not
... Show MoreDust can be considered as an important factor in environmental
pollution which has a direct eOect on human health. In this study ,we
attempted to eval uate serum oxidant -antiox idant balance in workers dust exposed continuously and also the effect of iron and silicon content in exposed dust on the mentioned balance .The study included tbrcc groups: A group included 20 workers of building block factories, B group included 20 workers in general company of grains production and C group included 15 healthy' subjects which represented control group. !ron and silicon contents in dust samples of two studied regions were measured. Higher levels o
... Show Moreackground: Escherichia coli is one of the most
important bacterial pathogen that can cause several
disease to human being . In our study we try to
investigate the sensitivity resistance pattern of
Escherichia coli against three antibiotics ( Amikacin,
Nalidixic acid and Cephalexin).
Methods: For this purpose we collected 51 clinical
isolates of Escherichia coli from stool and urine of
outpatient and inpatient patients from different wards
of AL-SADER Teaching Hospital in AL-NAJAF
AL-ASHRAf, IRAQ, and tested by culture and
sensitivity test .
Results: The results appeared that Amikacin show
the highest percentage of sensitivity ( 66.66 % ) ,
while Cephalexin show the lowest percentage of
sensiti
Atmospheric transmission is disturbed by scintillation, where scintillation caused more beam divergence. In this work target image spot radius was calculated in presence of atmospheric scintillation. The calculation depend on few relevant equation based on atmospheric parameter (for Middle East), tracking range, expansion ratio of applied beam expander's, receiving unit lens F-number, and the laser wavelength besides photodetector parameter. At maximum target range Rmax =20 km, target image radius is at its maximum Rs=0.4 mm. As the range decreases spot radius decreases too, until the range reaches limit (4 km) at which target image spot radius at its minimum value (0.22 mm). Then as the range decreases, spot radius increases due to geom
... Show MoreBackground: Hyperlipidemia is an elevated fat (lipids), mostly cholesterol and triglycerides, in the blood. These lipids usually bind to proteins to remain circulated so-called lipoprotein. Aims of the study: To determine taste detection threshold and estimate the trace elements (zinc) in serum and saliva of those patients and compare all of these with healthy control subjects. Methods: Eighty subjects were incorporated in this study, thy were divided into two groups: forty patients on simvastatin treatment age between (35-60) years, and forty healthy control of age range between (35-60) years. Saliva was collected by non-stimulated technique within 10 minutes. Serum was obtained from each subject. Zinc was estimated in serum and saliva
... Show MoreDetecting and subtracting the Motion objects from backgrounds is one of the most important areas. The development of cameras and their widespread use in most areas of security, surveillance, and others made face this problem. The difficulty of this area is unstable in the classification of the pixels (foreground or background). This paper proposed a suggested background subtraction algorithm based on the histogram. The classification threshold is adaptively calculated according to many tests. The performance of the proposed algorithms was compared with state-of-the-art methods in complex dynamic scenes.