Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative disorder with various clinical types. Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) is significantly elevated in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of MS patients compared with that of healthy controls. The aim of this study is to evaluate serum levels of GFAP in relation to disease activity in relapsing-remitting MS patients and to compare them with those of healthy controls. Method: This study involved 58 MS patients of relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) type, 22 in an active stage of the disease and 36 in remission, and 50 healthy individuals as age- and sex-matched controls. Blood samples were taken from the patients at the MS Clinic of the Baghdad Teaching Hospital, and the serum levels of GFAP were determined using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technique. Results: Mean GFAP serum levels in 22 patients presenting in the active state of the disease (6.47±3.39 ng/ml) and 36 cases in remission were (5.33±2.82 ng/ml) (p=0.074) were determined as indicated. When RRMS patients (n=58) were compared with the healthy controls (n=50, 1.89±1.21), the difference in serum levels of GFAP was statistically significant (p<0.001). The area under the curve of the serum measures of GFAP obtained through the receiver operating characteristics was 0.903, which was also statistically significant (p<0.001). Conclusion: GFAP biomarker is an indicator of disease activity in RRMS patients, and its serum level may correlate with the state of remission or exacerbation.
Breast cancer has got much attention in the recent years as it is a one of the complex diseases that can threaten people lives. It can be determined from the levels of secreted proteins in the blood. In this project, we developed a method of finding a threshold to classify the probability of being affected by it in a population based on the levels of the related proteins in relatively small case-control samples. We applied our method to simulated and real data. The results showed that the method we used was accurate in estimating the probability of being diseased in both simulation and real data. Moreover, we were able to calculate the sensitivity and specificity under the null hypothesis of our research question of being diseased o
... Show MoreHeat shock protein 70 (HSP70) is a crucial protein with vital biological tasks in cell continuation of life. The variation of HSP70 activation occurs as a consequence of stress that includes temperature states, toxicity, poisoning with heavy metals, and tumor-related conditions. One of the master jobs of the HSP family is the suppression of caspase-mediated apoptosis signals. A high level of the expression of HSP70 is accountable for tumorigenesis and resistance against chemotherapeutic drugs. For this reason, the detection of HSP70 may help to diagnose cancerous diseases. From the other side, targeting this chaperone might help in treatment by maintaining late caspase-dependent events. This study was conducted to detect the presenc
... Show MoreThis study was conducted to determine the relationship between two most common diseases in Iraqis patients , which are Diabetic mellitus (DM) and Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA); seeking rheumatoid factor in hyperglycemic sera. The results revealed that ; 62.5% of hyperglycemic (HG) patients had positive rheumatoid factor (RF) . No difference in number between both gender of HG patients (20 males and 20 females ) , RF reaction was nearly similar in males and females of HG patients ( 12 &13 respectively ) . Only 40% out of patient controls had positive RF . None of the apparently healthy subjects had positive RF .
Background: Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic destructive inflammatory disease associated with destruction of joint connective tissues and bones, affecting 0.5%–1% of the population worldwide reporting higher prevalence of periodontitis among rheumatoid arthritis patients. The purpose of this study is to estimate level of salivary C-reactive protein in relation to the occurrence and severity of the periodontal disease and other oral parameters among group of patients with rheumatoid arthritis Material and methods: Fifty women patients with rheumatoid arthritis; twenty five on Methotrexate treatment and twenty five on combination treatment of Methotrexate and Etanercept selected as study groups with an age range (30-40) years old and
... Show MoreThis study investigates the corrosion inhibition performance of a newly synthesized quinazolinone derivative, AMQ, on mild steel in a hydrochloric acid medium. The inhibition efficiency was evaluated using potentiodynamic polarization at varying inhibitor concentrations (100–250 ppm) and temperatures (303– 333 K). The results showed that AMQ exhibited effective corrosion inhibition, with the highest efficiency of 74% observed at 250 ppm and 323 K. Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations were conducted to study the electronic properties of AMQ and its adsorption behavior. The thermodynamic parameters, including activation energy, enthalpy, and Gibbs free energy, were calculated, indicating spontaneous adsorption of AMQ onto the meta
... Show MoreThis study explored the use of industrial acidic crude palm oil (ACPO) for biodiesel production, facing a significant obstacle due to its high free fatty acid (FFA) content, which complicates the biodiesel production process. Typically, esterification is employed to convert FFAs into fatty acid methyl ester (FAME). Herein, the effectiveness of tungstosilicic acid hydrate (TSAH) as an unsupported heteropoly acid (HPA) catalyst for FFA esterification in ACPO was investigated. The FFA content was reduced from 8.43% to 0.95% under optimum conditions (4 wt% catalyst dosage, a methanol to oil molar ratio of 10:1, 150 min and a temperature of 60°C). Noteworthy, the TSAH catalyst showed stability over 7
By definition, the detection of protein complexes that form protein-protein interaction networks (PPINs) is an NP-hard problem. Evolutionary algorithms (EAs), as global search methods, are proven in the literature to be more successful than greedy methods in detecting protein complexes. However, the design of most of these EA-based approaches relies on the topological information of the proteins in the PPIN. Biological information, as a key resource for molecular profiles, on the other hand, acquired a little interest in the design of the components in these EA-based methods. The main aim of this paper is to redesign two operators in the EA based on the functional domain rather than the graph topological domain. The perturb
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