Introduction: Although it is discouraged, community pharmacy customers can obtain oral corticosteroids (OCSs) without prescriptions from some community pharmacies in Iraq. Medication abuse is defined as the use of medication for non-medical reasons. Objectives: The study aimed to determine demographics, beliefs, and perceptions associated with the abuse of oral corticosteroids for non-illness reasons among community pharmacy customers. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in fall 2018 in four provinces in Iraq. Customers of 19 community pharmacies asking for OCSs for themselves without a prescription were administered a paper survey. This study used the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) to measure the relationship between the motivational factors and the abuse of OCSs. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the relationships between the use of OCSs for non-illness and six TRA factors: Normative belief, behavioral belief, evaluation of the behavior, motivation to comply, subjective norms and attitude toward behavior. Results: The study enrolled 141 participants (98 women and 43 men) taking asking for OCSs without prescription. Dexamethasone was the most commonly used OCSs (59.6%). Friends were the primary recommenders for corticosteroids abuse (28.4%). The main reasons for using OCSs were to increase appetite and gain weight (53.9 %). Approximately one-third (36.2 %) of the participants gained weight after using OCSs. The regression analysis of the TRA variables showed two factors were significantly related to the abuse of OCSs. Age had a significant inverse relationship with the abuse of OCSs and the "good appearance" belief had a significant positive association with OCS abuse. Conclusion: Some Iraqi community pharmacy customers use non-prescribed oral corticosteroids to increase appetite and gain weight. Improve body appearance represents the dominant incentive that urges people to use OCSs without prescription. Health officials and healthcare practitioners need to promote people's awareness about the risks of misusing OCSs through education programs and advertisements in public health settings, media, and social media. Article Type: Original Research
The current issues in spam email detection systems are directly related to spam email classification's low accuracy and feature selection's high dimensionality. However, in machine learning (ML), feature selection (FS) as a global optimization strategy reduces data redundancy and produces a collection of precise and acceptable outcomes. A black hole algorithm-based FS algorithm is suggested in this paper for reducing the dimensionality of features and improving the accuracy of spam email classification. Each star's features are represented in binary form, with the features being transformed to binary using a sigmoid function. The proposed Binary Black Hole Algorithm (BBH) searches the feature space for the best feature subsets,
... Show MoreThe peristaltic transport of power-law fluid in an elastic tapered tube with variable cross-section induced by dilating peristaltic wave is studied. The exact solution of the expression for axial velocity, radial velocity, stream function, local shear stress, volume of flow rate and pressure gradient are obtained under the assumption of long wavelength and low Reynolds number. The effects of all parameters that appear in the problem are analyzed through graphs. The results showed that the flux is sinusoidal in nature and it is an increasing function with the increase of whereas it is a decreasing function with the increase of . An opposite behavior for shear strain is noticed compared to pressure gradient. Finally, trapping p
... Show MoreObjectives: This study aimed to evaluate the therapeutic potential effects of ascorbic acid or and pyridoxine on diabetic renal microalbumiuria. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study on patients with diabetes mellitus at Al-Yarmouk teaching hospital from January to December 2012, Iraq-Baghdad. Twenty one patients with diabetes mellitus (D.M), 8 IDDM and 13 IDDM were selected from, the duration of disease were ranged from 2-12 years for both type (10 females and 11males) and all enrolled patients ages were ranged from 28-65years. The concentration of total protein in urine was calculated by a biuret colorimetric assay and the urine creatinine level was measured by a modified Jaffe test. Statistical analysis: results are expressed as mean
... Show MoreAbstract
Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational program on nurses' practices concerning therapeutic communication.
Methodology: A quasi experimental design was carried out at Karbala Center for Cardiac Diseases and Surgery, Imam Hussein Medical City and Al-Handia General Hospital for period 10th June 2017 to the 15th of August 2018.
The program and instruments were constructed and developed by the researcher to measure the purpose of the study. Purposive sample comprised of (57) nurses were divided into two groups, study and control groups. The questionnaire consisted from two parts, first part is related to nurses' demographic characteristics and second part which include practices checkl
The paper presents a highly accurate power flow solution, reducing the possibility of ending at local minima, by using Real-Coded Genetic Algorithm (RCGA) with system reduction and restoration. The proposed method (RCGA) is modified to reduce the total computing time by reducing the system in size to that of the generator buses, which, for any realistic system, will be smaller in number, and the load buses are eliminated. Then solving the power flow problem for the generator buses only by real-coded GA to calculate the voltage phase angles, whereas the voltage magnitudes are specified resulted in reduced computation time for the solution. Then the system is restored by calculating the voltages of the load buses in terms
... Show MoreThe problem of reconstruction of a timewise dependent coefficient and free boundary at once in a nonlocal diffusion equation under Stefan and heat Flux as nonlocal overdetermination conditions have been considered. A Crank–Nicolson finite difference method (FDM) combined with the trapezoidal rule quadrature is used for the direct problem. While the inverse problem is reformulated as a nonlinear regularized least-square optimization problem with simple bound and solved efficiently by MATLAB subroutine lsqnonlin from the optimization toolbox. Since the problem under investigation is generally ill-posed, a small error in the input data leads to a huge error in the output, then Tikhonov’s regularization technique is app
... Show MoreNewly 4-amino-1,2,4-triazole-3-thione ring 2 was formed at position six of 2-methylphenol from the reaction of 6-(5-thio1,3,4-oxadiazol-2-yl)-2-methylphenol 1 with hydrazine hydrochloride in the presence of anhydrase sodium acetate. Seven newly fused heterocyclic compounds were synthesized from compound 2. First fused heterocyclic was 6-(6-(3,5-di-tertbutyl-4-hydroxyphenyl)-[1,2,4]triazolo[3,4-b][1,3,4]thiadiazol-3-yl)-2-methylphenol 3 synthesized from reaction compound 2 with 3,5-di-tert-butyl-4-hydroxybenzoic acid in POCl3. Reaction compound 2 with bromophencylbromide afford 6-(6-(4-bromophenyl)-5H-[1,2,4]triazolo[3,4-b][1,3,4]-thiadiazin-3-yl)-2-methylphenol 4. 6-(6-thio-1,7a-dihydro-[1,2,4] triazolo[3,4-b][1,3,4]-thiadiazol-3-yl)-2
... Show MoreGreen synthesis is depending on preparation of nano composited SiO2/V2O5 by using the modified sol-gel method depending on rice husk ash as a source for the extraction of silica gel and the product powder of nano composited SiO2/V2O5 characterization by many techniques such as X-ray diffraction spectroscopy (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and N2 adsorptions/desorption isotherms (BET). This study also includs the biological effectiveness of SiO2/V2O5 and its effect on inhibiting bacterial growth after the prepared nanomaterial was applied to wound dressings, which gave a promising result for its use as
... Show MoreNew simple and sensitive spectrophotometric methods for the determination of paracetamol in aqueous medium were developed. The first method is based on coupling of paracetamol with p-amino-2-hydroxy sodium benzoate (AHB) in the presence of sodium periodate, as oxidizing agent, to form a brownish-orange compound which shows a λmax at 470 nm. The molar absorptivity (εmax) of the colored product was found to be (3371) l. mole1. cm-1 and Sandel’s index 0.0449 μg. cm-2. The method follows Beer’s law in the concentration range of 12.5-500.0 μg of paracetamol in a final volume of 25 ml (0.5-20.0) μg. ml-1 with relative standard deviation percent (RSD%) ranged between 0.26-4.71% and accuracy, expressed by recovery percent, 95-106% for five
... Show MoreIn order to investigate the presence of methicillin or multidrug resistant Staphylococcus aureus in food-chain especially Cows raw milk and white raw soft cheese and its whey, a total of 30 samples were collected randomly from different markets in Baghdad Province during December 2012 till February 2013, in which samples were analyzed by a standard isolation protocols of food microbiology with some modification processing by new, modern and rapid technology tools such as chromogenic medium Baird-Parker agar, Electronic RapIDTM Staph Plus Code Compendium Panel System (ERIC®) Dryspot Staphytect Plus and Penicillin Binding Protein (PBP2') Plus assays; as well as, studying the susceptibility of isolates to different selected antibiotics. The r
... Show More