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
Due to the great losses caused by weeds to the crop, it is necessary to continue testing new herbicides that may be more efficient than the herbicides used that can reduce competition between weeds and crops, Therefore, a field experiment was carried out in the experimental field of the Department of Field Crops, College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences, University of Baghdad (Al-Jadriya) during the winter season of 2021-22 in order to evaluate the efficiency of the herbicide H-199 and compare it with some herbicides used in controlling companion weed to three cultivars of wheat and its effect in the yield and its components. The experiment was applied according to the randomized complete block design with split-plot arrangement
... Show MoreIn the 1980s, the French Administration Roads LCPC developed high modulus mixtures (EME) by using hard binder. This type of mixture presented good resistance to moisture damage and improved mechanical properties for asphalt mixtures including high modulus, good fatigue behaviour and excellent resistance to rutting. In Iraq, this type of mixture has not been used yet. The main objective of this research is to evaluate the performance of high modulus mixtures and comparing them with the conventional mixture, to achieve this objective, asphalt concrete mixes were prepared and then tested to evaluate their engineering properties which include moisture damage, resilient modulus, permanent deformation and fatigue characteristics. These pro
... Show Morecharacteristic tissues and cells, exerting their pharmacological aspects and alleviating a lot of diseased processes. Accordingly, this research is about introducing some isatins to be nucleophilically attacked at C3 forming products of azomethine ylide functionality. These iminium compounds were made by allowing certain isatins to be reacted with the secondary amino acid, proline, at acetic acid and methanol medium and then collected after purification to be identified with total Leukocyte count (TLC) and melting point. The structural characterization was performed by fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR), and community health nursing (CHN) analysis. The microbiological evaluatio
... Show MoreTwitter data analysis is an emerging field of research that utilizes data collected from Twitter to address many issues such as disaster response, sentiment analysis, and demographic studies. The success of data analysis relies on collecting accurate and representative data of the studied group or phenomena to get the best results. Various twitter analysis applications rely on collecting the locations of the users sending the tweets, but this information is not always available. There are several attempts at estimating location based aspects of a tweet. However, there is a lack of attempts on investigating the data collection methods that are focused on location. In this paper, we investigate the two methods for obtaining location-based dat
... Show MoreIn the current Windows version (Vista), as in all previous versions, creating a user account without setting a password is possible. For a personal PC this might be without too much risk, although it is not recommended, even by Microsoft itself. However, for business computers it is necessary to restrict access to the computers, starting with defining a different password for every user account. For the earlier versions of Windows, a lot of resources can be found giving advice how to construct passwords of user accounts. In some extent they contain remarks concerning the suitability of their solution for Windows Vista. But all these resources are not very precise about what kind of passwords the user must use. To assess the protection of pa
... Show MoreSouth Sudan is known by its tribal and racial variation .Tribal Perception represents the
procedure of dealings in Southern society .And that what make Sudan as a stable country that
suffer from divisions . Everybody wants to rule in spite of his inability and un qualification
which enables the establishment of an urbanized country .the frustration of the state in
handling the interior variety on religious, tribal and racial basis and contracting national
ideality in spared by shared ingredients between gathered groups in one state, all these reasons
make it hard to create a united national identity which is able to unite atheist and religious
parties together. Due to this ,the study is established to clarify the nat
This study focused on benthic algae (epipelic and attached algae on concrete lining stream) in Bani-Hassan stream in Holly Karbala, Iraq. The qualitative and quantitative studies of benthic algae were done by collecting 240 samples from five sites in the study area for the period from December 2012 to November 2013. Also, the environmental variables of the stream were examined in term of temporary and spatial. The results showed that the stream was alkaline, hard, oligohaline and a well aerated. The total nitrogen to the total phosphorus (TN: TP) ratio indicates nitrogen limitation. 129 species of benthic algae belonging to 57 genera were identified. Bacillariophyceae (diatoms) was the predominant taxon (95 species) followed by Chlorophyce
... Show MoreThe study is concern on determine the type of Candida spp.in leukemia patients that were infected with oral candidiasis as a result to their immune suppression (weekend immune system) due to their submission to radiation and chemotherapy treatment. The result showed that the most common isolates were C. guillermondii 19 which represent 31.66% of cases, then followed by C. itermedia 11 which represent 18.3%, while the less common isolates were for C. zeylamodes 3 which represent 5%.