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
One hundred and seventy-six cases of suspected meningitis (SMN) were included in a cross-sectional study. Their ages ranged from less than 1 year to 80 years, of whom 44.3% were male. The aim was to assess bacterial meningitis (BMN) in terms of incidence and types of causative bacteria. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) specimens were collected and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis was conducted with universal primers designed to amplify a DNA fragment (996 bp) of the 16S rRNA gene of eubacteria. Resolving PCR products in agarose-gel electrophoresis revealed that 37.5% of CSF specimens were PCR positive, while 62.5% of CSF specimens showed no band and were considered PCR-negative. Eighty percent of the latter specimens were not
... Show MoreClinical keratoconus (KCN) detection is a challenging and time-consuming task. In the diagnosis process, ophthalmologists must revise demographic and clinical ophthalmic examinations. The latter include slit-lamb, corneal topographic maps, and Pentacam indices (PI). We propose an Ensemble of Deep Transfer Learning (EDTL) based on corneal topographic maps. We consider four pretrained networks, SqueezeNet (SqN), AlexNet (AN), ShuffleNet (SfN), and MobileNet-v2 (MN), and fine-tune them on a dataset of KCN and normal cases, each including four topographic maps. We also consider a PI classifier. Then, our EDTL method combines the output probabilities of each of the five classifiers to obtain a decision b
The texture analysis of cancer cells leads to a procedure to distinguish spatial differences within an image and extract essential information. This study used two test tumours images to determine cancer type, location, and geometric characteristics (area, size, dimensions, radius, etc.). The suggested algorithm was designed to detect and distinguish breast cancer using the segmentation-based threshold technique. The method of texture analysis Grey Level Size Zone method was used to extract 11 features: Small Zone Emphasis, Large Zone Emphasis, Low Grey Level Zone Emphasis, High Grey Level Zone Emphasis, Small Zone Low Grey Level Emphasis, Small Zone High Grey Level Emphasis, Large Zone Low Grey Level Emphasis, Large Zone High Gre
... Show MoreA total of 172 clinical were obtained over 6 months. Klebsiella spp. was detected in 58 (33.7%) samples with a high percentage 29 (50%) in urine in female and low percentage 1(1.7%) in pus and burn swabs in male, and the vaginal swab was 1(1.7%). The female to male ratio was 3.1:1. PCR detection showed that 51(87.93%) out of 58 produce 108 bp. product with rpoB specific primer that represented K. pneumonia. Whereas 7(12.07%) showed PCR product with 343 bp by K. oxytoca specific primer (peh X), furthermore, the sequences of two selected isolates showed that the species related to K. oxytoca strain CAV1335, and to K. oxytoca strain CAV1374. Five selected isolates were re-tested by the gyr A primer, all were showed specific band product wit
... Show MoreMedical imaging is a technique that has been used for diagnosis and treatment of a large number of diseases. Therefore it has become necessary to conduct a good image processing to extract the finest desired result and information. In this study, genetic algorithm (GA)-based clustering technique (K-means and Fuzzy C Means (FCM)) were used to segment thyroid Computed Tomography (CT) images to an extraction thyroid tumor. Traditional GA, K-means and FCM algorithms were applied separately on the original images and on the enhanced image with Anisotropic Diffusion Filter (ADF). The resulting cluster centers from K-means and FCM were used as the initial population in GA for the implementation of GAK-Mean and GAFCM. Jaccard index was used to s
... Show MoreIn modern years, internet and computers were used by many nations all overhead the world in different domains. So the number of Intruders is growing day-by-day posing a critical problem in recognizing among normal and abnormal manner of users in the network. Researchers have discussed the security concerns from different perspectives. Network Intrusion detection system which essentially analyzes, predicts the network traffic and the actions of users, then these behaviors will be examined either anomaly or normal manner. This paper suggested Deep analyzing system of NIDS to construct network intrusion detection system and detecting the type of intrusions in traditional network. The performance of the proposed system was evaluated by using
... Show MoreBackground: Several causes stand behind prolonged neonatal Jaundice (Jaundice that persists more than 2 weeks).
Objectives: To find out the frequency of association between Urinary tract infections (UTI) and prolonged neonatal jaundice in term infants during the first two months of life.
Patients and methods: We conducted an observational prospective study in children welfare teaching hospital, Medical City Complex, Baghdad. Fifty term infants, less than two months of age, with clinically evident jaundice that has persisted for more than 14 days of life were enrolled; UTI was confirmed by urine culture and sensitivity. Demographic features, historical characteristics, lab
... Show MoreThis study's objective is to assess how well UV spectrophotometry can be used in conjunction with multivariate calibration based on partial least squares (PLS) regression for concurrent quantitative analysis of antibacterial mixture (Levofloxacin (LIV), Metronidazole (MET), Rifampicin (RIF) and Sulfamethoxazole (SUL)) in their artificial mixtures and pharmaceutical formulations. The experimental calibration and validation matrixes were created using 42 and 39 samples, respectively. The concentration range taken into account was 0-17 μg/mL for all components. The calibration standards' absorbance measurements were made between 210 and 350 nm, with intervals of 0.2 nm. The associated parameters were examined in order to develop the optimal c
... Show MoreThe main aim of this paper is to apply a new technique suggested by Temimi and Ansari namely (TAM) for solving higher order Integro-Differential Equations. These equations are commonly hard to handle analytically so it is request numerical methods to get an efficient approximate solution. Series solutions of the problem under consideration are presented by means of the Iterative Method (IM). The numerical results show that the method is effective, accurate and easy to implement rapidly convergent series to the exact solution with minimum amount of computation. The MATLAB is used as a software for the calculations.
The manuscript should contain an abstract. The abstract should be self-contained and citation-free and should not exceed 200 words. The abstract should state the purpose, approach, results and conclusions of the work. The author should assume that the reader has some knowledge of the subject but has not read the paper. Thus, the abstract should be intelligible and complete in it-self (no numerical references); it should not cite figures, tables, or sections of the paper. The abstract should be written using third person instead of first perso The fast microwave assisted pyrolysis (FMWAP) of water hyacinth (WH) for biochar production is investigated. Taguchi’s method was used to optimize FMWAP parameters. The effects of microwave
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