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
Background: With the increasing demands for adult orthodontics, a growing need arises to bond attachments to porcelain surfaces. Optimal adhesion to porcelain surface should allow orthodontic treatment without bond failure but not jeopardize porcelain integrity after debonding.The present study was carried out to compare the shear bond strength of metal bracket bonded to porcelain surface prepared by two mechanical treatments and by using different etching systems (Hydrofluoric acid 9% and acidulated phosphate fluoride 1.23%). Materials and Methods: The samples were comprised of 60 models (28mm *15mm*28mm) of metal fused to porcelain (feldspathic porcelain). They were divided as the following: group I (control): the porcelain surface left u
... Show MoreThe effect of thickness variation on some physical properties of hematite α-Fe2O3 thin films was investigated. An Fe2O3 bulk in the form of pellet was prepared by cold pressing of Fe2O3 powder with subsequent sintering at 800 . Thin films with various thicknesses were obtained on glass substrates by pulsed laser deposition technique. The films properties were characterized by XRD, and FT-IR. The deposited iron oxide thin films showed a single hematite phase with polycrystalline rhombohedral crystal structure .The thickness of films were estimated by using spectrometer to be (185-232) nm. Using Debye Scherrerś formula, the average grain size for the samples was found to be (18-32) nm. Atomic force microscopy indicated that the films had
... Show MoreThe objective of drilling parameters optimization in Majnoon oilfield is to arrive for a methodology that considers the past drilling data for five directional wells at 35 degree of inclination as a baseline for new wells to be drilled. Also, to predicts drilling performance by selecting the applied drilling parameters generated the highest rate of penetration (ROP) at each section. The focal point of the optimization process is to reduce drilling time and associated cost per each well. The results of this study show that the maximum ROP could not be achieved without sufficient flow rate to cool and clean the bit in clay intervals (36" and 24") hole sections. Although the influence of combination of Weight on Bit (WOB), Round per minute
... Show MoreArtificial Neural networks (ANN) are powerful and effective tools in time-series applications. The first aim of this paper is to diagnose better and more efficient ANN models (Back Propagation, Radial Basis Function Neural networks (RBF), and Recurrent neural networks) in solving the linear and nonlinear time-series behavior. The second aim is dealing with finding accurate estimators as the convergence sometimes is stack in the local minima. It is one of the problems that can bias the test of the robustness of the ANN in time series forecasting. To determine the best or the optimal ANN models, forecast Skill (SS) employed to measure the efficiency of the performance of ANN models. The mean square error and
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El horóscopo que es una predicción deducida de la posición de los astros del sistema solar y de los signos de Zodiaco, intenta no sólo predecir el futuro, sino también influir en el comportamiento del lector, orientándolo para que actúe adecuadamente y la invitación a actuar ante ese futuro que se aconseja mediante imperativos, perífrasis y otros recursos lingüísticos. Los horóscopos se caracterizan por su gran popularidad que existen en periódico o revista en columnas enteras dedicadas al tema, en donde se detallan la influencia que tendrá el día o el mes de cada uno de los signos correspondientes al zodíaco, siempre teniendo en cuenta la posici
... Show MorePredicting the network traffic of web pages is one of the areas that has increased focus in recent years. Modeling traffic helps find strategies for distributing network loads, identifying user behaviors and malicious traffic, and predicting future trends. Many statistical and intelligent methods have been studied to predict web traffic using time series of network traffic. In this paper, the use of machine learning algorithms to model Wikipedia traffic using Google's time series dataset is studied. Two data sets were used for time series, data generalization, building a set of machine learning models (XGboost, Logistic Regression, Linear Regression, and Random Forest), and comparing the performance of the models using (SMAPE) and
... Show MoreThe reaction oisolated and characterized by elemental analysis (C,H,N) , 1H-NMR, mass spectra and Fourier transform (Ft-IR). The reaction of the (L-AZD) with: [VO(II), Cr(III), Mn(II), Co(II), Ni(II), Cu(II), Zn(II), Cd(II) and Hg(II)], has been investigated and was isolated as tri nuclear cluster and characterized by: Ft-IR, U. v- Visible, electrical conductivity, magnetic susceptibilities at 25 Co, atomic absorption and molar ratio. Spectroscopic evidence showed that the binding of metal ions were through azide and carbonyl moieties resulting in a six- coordinating metal ions in [Cr (III), Mn (II), Co (II) and Ni (II)]. The Vo (II), Cu (II), Zn (II), Cd (II) and Hg (II) were coordinated through azide group only forming square pyramidal
... Show MoreSteganography is the art of concealing security data in media, such as pictures, audio, video, text, and protocols. The objective of this paper is hiding a secret message in a colour image to prevent an attacker from accessing the message. This is important because more people use the Internet all the time and network connections are spread around the world. The hidden secret message uses two general algorithms that are embedded and extracted. This paper proposes a new algorithm to conceal a secret message in a colour image in LSB. This algorithm includes three phases: 1) dividing the colour image into a number of blocks, 2) concealing the secret message, and 3) transmitting the stego-image from the sender in a multiplexer network and re
... Show MoreThe rise in the general level of prices in Iraq makes the local commodity less able to compete with other commodities, which leads to an increase in the amount of imports and a decrease in the amount of exports, since it raises demand for foreign currencies while decreasing demand for the local currency, which leads to a decrease in the exchange rate of the local currency in exchange for an increase in the exchange rate of currencies. This is one of the most important factors affecting the determination of the exchange rate and its fluctuations. This research deals with the currency of the European Euro and its impact against the Iraqi dinar. To make an accurate prediction for any process, modern methods can be used through which
... Show MoreIn this research Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique was applied to study the filtration process in water treatment. Eight models have been developed and tested using data from a pilot filtration plant, working under different process design criteria; influent turbidity, bed depth, grain size, filtration rate and running time (length of the filtration run), recording effluent turbidity and head losses. The ANN models were constructed for the prediction of different performance criteria in the filtration process: effluent turbidity, head losses and running time. The results indicate that it is quite possible to use artificial neural networks in predicting effluent turbidity, head losses and running time in the filtration process, wi
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