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 present study is a contribution to determine the effect of bark water extracts of the common trees of Eucalyptus camaldulensis to control the snail intermediate host (Bulinus truncatus) of urinary Schistosomiasis in Iraq. It was found that the lethal concentrations of bark phytochemicals to this snail were ranging from 10gm/l to 50gm/l.The effect of bark extracts was very remarkable during the first 24 hours.
Out of 120 isolates from different clinical cases, only 75 were found and confirmed that they belong to the Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria. The result revealed that the LasB virulent gene was present in 63 isolates with 63% percentage. The gel electrophoresis showed that the molecular weight of LasB gene was 300 bp. DNA sequences of LasB gene was done, and the results showed the presence of some gene mutations like substitution, addition and deletion with 97% identity with the Refseq gene. From the other side, the results of identities of translated nucleotides sequence with the original sequence of amino acids revealed that there are no effects of gene mutations on translation of the product protein.
An Indirect simple sensitive and applicable spectrofluorometric method has been developed for the determination of Cefotaxime Sodium (CEF), ciprofloxacin Hydrochloride (CIP) and Famotidine (FAM) using reaction system bromate-bromide and acriflavine (AF) as fluorescent dye. The method is based on the oxidation of drugs with known excess bromate-bromide mixture in acidic medium and subsequent determination of unreacted oxidant by quenching fluorescence of AF. Fluorescence intensity of residual AF was measured at 528 nm after excitation at 402 nm. The fluorescence-concentration plots were rectilinear over the ranges 0.1-3.0, 0.05-2.6 and 0.1-3.8 µg ml-1 with lower detection limits of 0.013, 0.018 and 0.021 µg ml-1 an
... Show MoreUrinary stones are one of the most common painful disorders of the urinary system. Four new technologies have transformed the treatment of urinary stones: Electrohydraulic lithotripsy, ultrasonic lithotripsy, extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy, and laser lithotripsy.The purpose of this study is to determine whether pulsed holmium laser energy is an effective method for fragmenting urinary tract stones in vitro, and to determine whether stone composition affects the efficacy of holmium laser lithotripsy. Human urinary stones of known composition with different sizes, shapes and colors were used for this study. The weight and the size of each stone were measured. The surgical laser system which used in our study is Ho:YAG laser(2100nm)
... Show MoreKlebsiella pneumoniae causes lethal nosocomial infections, mostly affecting patients with severe burns. More than 80% of its isolates have shown resistance to routinely used antibiotics in parallel with increased infection rates. The study aimed to determine the molecular typing and genetic relatedness of K. pneumoniae. Therefore, 20 multidrug resistant (MDR) K. pneumoniae already isolated from infected burned wounds in two major hospitals of Al-Kut city east Iraq were subjected to genotyping analysis. The random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD)-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique was used along with three oligonucleotide primers (P13, OPX-04, and OPY-01). The amplicons’ patterns of the electrophoresis-gel were analyzed by the
... Show MoreAngiogenesis is important for tissue during normal physiological processes as well as in a number of diseases, including cancer. Drug resistance is one of the largest difficulties to antiangiogenesis therapy. Due to their lower cytotoxicity and stronger pharmacological advantage, phytochemical anticancer medications have a number of advantages over chemical chemotherapeutic drugs. In the current study, the effectiveness of AuNPs, AuNPs-GAL, and free galangin as an antiangiogenesis agent was evaluated. Different physicochemical and molecular approaches have been used including the characterization, cytotoxicity, scratch wound healing assay, and gene expression of VEGF and ERKI in MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 human breast cancer cell line. Re
... Show MoreThe Sebkha is considered the evaporative geomorphological features, where climate plays an active role. It forms part of the surface features in Mesopotamia plain of Iraqi, which is the most fertile lands, and because of complimentary natural and human factors turned most of the arable land to the territory of Sebkha lands. The use satellite image (Raw Data), Landsat 30M Mss for the year 1976 Landsat 7 ETM, and the Landsat 8 for year 2013 (LDCM) for the summer Landsat Data Continuity Mission and perform geometric correction, enhancements, and Subset image And a visual analysis Space visuals based on the analysis of spectral fingerprints earth's This study has shown that the best in the discrimination of Sebkha Remote sensing techniques a
... Show MoreThe main objective of this paper is to develop and validate flow injection method, a precise, accurate, simple, economic, low cost and specific turbidimetric method for the quantitative determination of mebeverine hydrochloride (MbH) in pharmaceutical preparations. A homemade NAG Dual & Solo (0-180º) analyser which contains two identical detections units (cell 1 and 2) was applied for turbidity measurements. The developed method was optimized for different chemical and physical parameters such as perception reagent concentrations, aqueous salts solutions, flow rate, the intensity of the sources light, sample volume, mixing coil and purge time. The correlation coefficients (r) of the developed method were 0.9980 and 0.9986 for cell
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