Psoriasis is a complex autoimmune disorder characterized by skin inflammation with keratinocyte proliferation, and 85% of cases present as plaque-type psoriasis. Biologics such as ustekinumab (UST) are highly successful therapies for psoriasis. To achieve maximum clinical efficacy while minimizing undesirable effects, therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) for biologics has emerged. This study aims to measure the UST trough level (TL) and anti-drug antibodies (ADAs) and to evaluate clinical response in Iraqi patients with moderate-to-severe psoriasis in order to make appropriate recommendations for modifying therapy. This cross-sectional study enrolled 75 patients, divided into two groups: Group 1, patients who achieved the UST target TL (≥0.6
... Show MoreAcinetobacter baumannii ability to form biofilm makes it to be opportunistic pathogen causing of nosocomial infections and to be good survivor in adverse environmental conditions including medical devices and hospital environments. Six isolates of A. baumannii were isolated from drinking water and tested to investigate biofilm formation capacity on three different type of abiotic surface, also several factors were examined such as hydrophobicity, PH and temperature. All A. baumannii isolates displayed a positive biofilm on congored aga test CRA (pigmented colonies with black color) and Christensen's test (adhesive layer of stained material to the inside surface of the tube).The obtained data of microbial adhesion to hydrocarbons assay (MATH
... Show MoreTwo locally isolated microalgae (Chlorella vulgaris Bejerinck and Nitzschia palea (Kützing) W. Smith) were used in the current study to test their ability to production biodiesel through stimulated in different nitrogen concentration treatments (0, 2, 4, 8 gl ), and effect of nitrogen concentration on the quantity of primary product (carbohydrate, protein ), also the quantity and quality of lipid. The results revealed that starvation of nitrogen led to high lipid yielding, in C. vulgaris and N. palea the lipid content increased from 6.6% to 40% and 40% to 60% of dry weight (DW) respectively.Also in C. vulgaris, the highest carbohydrate was 23% of DW from zero nitrate medium and the highest protein was 50% of DW in the treatment 8gl. Whil
... Show MoreThe study aimed to determine the impact of energy for the north and south magnetic poles on the the growth of bacteria isolated from cases of tooth decay, 68 swabs were collected from surfaces of faulty tooth, the detected of Staphylococcus aureus
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Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in females. In Iraq there are noticeable elevation in incidence rates and prevalence of advanced stages of breast cancer. Ferritin is intracellular iron storage protein abundant in circulation and its main application in differential diagnosis of anemia.
The level of serum ferritin was found raised in various cancers including breast cancer. The aim of this study was to assess whether the serum ferritin concentration would be altered in Iraqi women with breast cancer and it could be related to progression of disease.
Sixty eight females participated in this study. The mean age of these females was 53.25± 9.52 .The level of serum ferritin was measured in 24
... Show MoreThis study included 46 patients with liver hydatid cyst diagnosed clinically and surgically. Control group consist of 22 healthy volunteers. The patients were divided according to the size of the cysts into more and less than 5 cm diameter size, 33 and 13, respectively. Also they were divided into primary and secondary hydatid cyst infection, 30 and 16, respectively. Significant increase of GOT, GPT and ALP levels were recorded due to hydatid cyst infection and had direct effect on the liver function, beside an increase in total bilirubin in patients serum compared with the control, also the same occurred in the secondary infection compared with primary infection, patients with> 5 cm showed significant increase in the above levels compared
... Show MoreVoice Activity Detection (VAD) is considered as an important pre-processing step in speech processing systems such as speech enhancement, speech recognition, gender and age identification. VAD helps in reducing the time required to process speech data and to improve final system accuracy by focusing the work on the voiced part of the speech. An automatic technique for VAD using Fuzzy-Neuro technique (FN-AVAD) is presented in this paper. The aim of this work is to alleviate the problem of choosing the best threshold value in traditional VAD methods and achieves automaticity by combining fuzzy clustering and machine learning techniques. Four features are extracted from each speech segment, which are short term energy, zero-crossing rate, auto
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