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
Many approaches of different complexity already exist to edge detection in
color images. Nevertheless, the question remains of how different are the results
when employing computational costly techniques instead of simple ones. This
paper presents a comparative study on two approaches to color edge detection to
reduce noise in image. The approaches are based on the Sobel operator and the
Laplace operator. Furthermore, an efficient algorithm for implementing the two
operators is presented. The operators have been applied to real images. The results
are presented in this paper. It is shown that the quality of the results increases by
using second derivative operator (Laplace operator). And noise reduced in a good
Lost circulation or losses in drilling fluid is one of the most important problems in the oil and gas industry, and it appeared at the beginning of this industry, which caused many problems during the drilling process, which may lead to closing the well and stopping the drilling process. The drilling muds are relatively expensive, especially the muds that contain oil-based mud or that contain special additives, so it is not economically beneficial to waste and lose these muds. The treatment of drilling fluid losses is also somewhat expensive as a result of the wasted time that it caused, as well as the high cost of materials used in the treatment such as heavy materials, cement, and others. The best way to deal with drilling fluid losses
... Show MoreBackground: five clinical phases were described in patients with chronic (HBV) infection: HBeAg- positive HBV infection, HBeAg- positive chronic HB, HBeAg negative HBV infection, HBeAg-negative CHB and occult HBV infection. Aim: This study aimed to determine the incidence of the unclassified phase (gray zone) in chronic hepatitis B patients and its significant in the clinical practice. Patients and methods: The study was conducted retrospectively on 109 patients' who have HBsAg positive for more than 6 months. The data recorded include; HbeAg and anti-HBe Ab, ultrasound of the abdomen, HBV DNA load and alanine aminotransferase (ALT), accordingly; we classify the patients to known clinical phases. Patients who were unfit one of these phases
... Show MoreConvolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have high performance in the fields of object recognition and classification. The strength of CNNs comes from the fact that they are able to extract information from raw-pixel content and learn features automatically. Feature extraction and classification algorithms can be either hand-crafted or Deep Learning (DL) based. DL detection approaches can be either two stages (region proposal approaches) detector or a single stage (non-region proposal approach) detector. Region proposal-based techniques include R-CNN, Fast RCNN, and Faster RCNN. Non-region proposal-based techniques include Single Shot Detector (SSD) and You Only Look Once (YOLO). We are going to compare the speed and accuracy of Faster RCNN,
... Show MoreA group of acceptance sampling to testing the products was designed when the life time of an item follows a log-logistics distribution. The minimum number of groups (k) required for a given group size and acceptance number is determined when various values of Consumer’s Risk and test termination time are specified. All the results about these sampling plan and probability of acceptance were explained with tables.
Background: The aim of this study was for estimation and comparism of masticatory efficiency in patient wearing heat cured acrylic and flexible base partial denture, finding out the role of peanuts and carrots on the measurement of chewing efficiency, and to find out whether the types of P.D. (being single or two opposing each other) has any effect on the masticatory performance. Materials and methods: Twenty partially edentulous patients were selected. Five of these patients were selected having Kennedy class I with no modification against natural dentition, other 5patients having Cl.I against Cl.I . The other 5 patients having Cl.III against natural dentition and the last 5 patients were with Cl.III against Cl.III. several ways were used
... Show MoreStandards play a vital role in documenting the values of new test results in the form of tables. They are one of the basic requirements that the standardization process aims for as a complement to standardizing test procedures, and contribute to knowing the current reality of the student. The degree of readiness and level as a result of practicing different exercises for sports activities, in addition to the possibility of adopting it for comparison with his group or similar groups, classification, prediction and selection. Developing the skill of handling the football in the educational field is an important matter for achieving distinguished performance among students. This skill requires a level of accuracy, speed and control, and
... Show MoreObjective: To Evaluate the Roley of Cytotoxic T-Lymphocytek antigen 4 Polymorphism and soluble immune checkpoint level (PD-1,PDL-1 and CTLA-4 ) in SARS-Cov-2 patients. Methods: Fromt October 2020 to April 2021, the currentk study was conducted in Baghdad-Iraq. Ninety patients with Confirmatory SARS-Cov-2 by PCR were inclusion in the study, and they were seeking treatment at Medical City in Baghdad's Teaching Hospital (BTH). Patients with SARS-Cov-2 were divided into two groups: those with Sever SARS-Cov-2 symptom and those with mild - moderate SARS-Cov-2 symptoms (cross sectional study. Patients with another form of autoimmune illness, malignant, diabetes, under the age of 18 and pregnant women were excluded. Results: Data rega
... Show More