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
Among the different passive techniques heat pipe heat exchanger (HPHE) seems to be the most effective one for energy saving in heating ventilation and air conditioning system (HVAC). The applications for nanofluids with high conductivity are favorable to increase the thermal performance in HPHE. Even though the nanofluid has the higher heat conduction coefficient that dispels more heat theoretically but the higher concentration will make clustering .Clustering is a problem that must be solved before nanofluids can be considered for long-term practical uses. Results showed that the maximum value of relative power is 0.13 mW at nanofluid compared with other concentrations due to the low density of nanofluid at this concentration. For highe
... Show MoreThis paper reports a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) as a biosensor. The FBGs were etched using a chemical agent,namely,hydrofluoric acid (HF). This implies the removal of some part of the cladding layer. Consequently, the evanescent field propagating out of the core will be closer to the environment and become more sensitive to the change in the surrounding. The proposed FBG sensor was utilized to detect toxic heavy metal ions aqueous medium namely, copper ions (Cu2+). Two FBG sensors were etched with 20 and 40 μm diameters and fabricated. The sensors were studied towards Cu2+ with different concentrations using wavelength shift as a result of the interaction between the evanescent field and copper ions. The FBG sensors showed
... Show MoreBotnet detection develops a challenging problem in numerous fields such as order, cybersecurity, law, finance, healthcare, and so on. The botnet signifies the group of co-operated Internet connected devices controlled by cyber criminals for starting co-ordinated attacks and applying various malicious events. While the botnet is seamlessly dynamic with developing counter-measures projected by both network and host-based detection techniques, the convention techniques are failed to attain sufficient safety to botnet threats. Thus, machine learning approaches are established for detecting and classifying botnets for cybersecurity. This article presents a novel dragonfly algorithm with multi-class support vector machines enabled botnet
... Show MoreIn this paper, the botnet detection problem is defined as a feature selection problem and the genetic algorithm (GA) is used to search for the best significant combination of features from the entire search space of set of features. Furthermore, the Decision Tree (DT) classifier is used as an objective function to direct the ability of the proposed GA to locate the combination of features that can correctly classify the activities into normal traffics and botnet attacks. Two datasets namely the UNSW-NB15 and the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity Intrusion Detection System 2017 (CICIDS2017), are used as evaluation datasets. The results reveal that the proposed DT-aware GA can effectively find the relevant features from
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The research addresses the specification table and the extent of its use in developing achievement tests, as well as detects the obstacles to its use through a sample of (120) respondents from the faculty members in some Baghdad schools and colleges. After unpacking and processing the data statistically, the research reached several results: the study sample do not use the test map in the development of their tests, as their percentage reached (82%) and there are no statistically significant differences in the use of the specification table by the sample members according to their place of work or the number of years of experience. The results also revealed the most important reasons that prevent the use
... Show MoreThe settlement evaluation for the jet grouted columns (JGC) in soft soils is a problematic matter, because it is influenced by the number of aspects such as soil type, effect mixture between soil and grouting materials, nozzle energy, jet grouting, water flow rate, rotation and lifting speed. Most methods of design the jet-grouting column based on experience. In this study, a prototype single and group jet grouting models (single, 1*2, and 2*2) with the total length and diameter were (2000 and 150 mm) respectively and clear spacing (3D) has been constructed in soft clay and subjected to vertical axial loads. Furthermore, different theoretical methods have been used for the estimation
Acinetobacter baumannii (A. baumannii ) is considered a critical healthcare problem for patients in intensive care units due to its high ability to be multidrug-resistant to most commercially available antibiotics. The aim of this study is to develop a colorimetric assay to quantitatively detect the target DNA of A. baumannii based on unmodified gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) from different clinical samples (burns, surgical wounds, sputum, blood and urine). A total of thirty-six A. baumannii clinical isolates were collected from five Iraqi hospitals in Erbil and Mosul provinces within the period from September 2020 to January 2021. Bacterial isolation and biochemical identification of isolates
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