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.
This research concentrate on cultivated Iraqi Agave attenuata dried leaves and roots, because of little studies on this plant especially on the root that lead to the eager of study and comparison of phytochemical constituents between leaves and root. Extraction of bioactive constituents was carried out using several solvents with increasing polarity (n-hexane, ethyl acetate and methanol) by soxhlet apparatus. Steroidal saponins in Agave genus is well documented in many species, lightening the minds in this research on extraction method which is specific for steroidal saponins. Phytochemical screening was done by GC/MS for n-hexane fraction, qualitative and quantitative estimation of several bioactive constituents (caffe
... Show MoreA novel series of mixed-ligand complexes of the type, [ML1(L2)3]Clx [M= Cr(III), Fe(III), Co(II),Ni(II), Cu(II), Cd(II) and Hg(II), n = 2, 3], was synthesized using Schiff base (HL1) as main ligand, nicotinamide (L2) as secondary ligand, and the corresponding metal ions in 1:3:1 molar ratio. The main ligand, HL1 was prepared by the interaction of ampicillin drug and 4-chlorobenzophenone. The synthesized mixed ligand complexes were characterized by elemental analysis, UV-Vis, FT-IR,1H-NMR,13C-NMR and TG/DTG studies. In the mixed-ligand complexes, the Schiff base ligand, HL1 showed coordination to the central metal ion in tridentate manner via azomethine nitrogen, β-lactam ring oxygen and deprotonated carboxylic oxygen atoms, whereas the sec
... Show MoreThe Electro-Fenton oxidation process is one of the essential advanced electrochemical oxidation processes used to treat Phenol and its derivatives in wastewater. The Electro-Fenton oxidation process was carried out at an ambient temperature at different current density (2, 4, 6, 8 mA/cm2) for up to 6 h. Sodium Sulfate at a concentration of 0.05M was used as a supporting electrolyte, and 0.4 mM of Ferrous ion concentration (Fe2+) was used as a catalyst. The electrolyte cell consists of graphite modified by an electrodepositing layer of PbO2 on its surface as anode and carbon fiber modified with Graphene as a cathode. The results indicated that Phenol concentration decreases with an increase in current dens
... Show MoreA new Schiff base [1-((2-(1H-indol-3-yl)ethylimino)methyl)naphthalene-2-ol] (HL) has been synthesized by condensing (2-hydroxy-1-naphthaldehyde) with (2-(1H-indol-3-yl)ethylamine). In turn, its transition metal complexes were prepared having the general formula; [Pt(IV)Cl2(L)2], [Re(V)Cl2(L)2]Cl and [Pd(L)2], 2K[M(II)Cl2(L)2] where M(II) = Co, Ni, Cu] are reported. Ligand as well as metal complexes are characterized by spectroscopic techniques such as FT-IR, UV-visible, 13C & 1H NMR, mass, elemental analysis. The results suggested that the ligand behaves like a bidentate ligand for all the synthesized complexes. On the other hand, theoretical studies of the ligand as well its metal complexes were conducted at gas phase using Hyp
... Show MoreMethicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the principal nosocomial causative agents. This bacterium has the capability to resist wide range of antibiotics and it is responsible for many diseases like skin, nose and wounds infection. In this study, randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD)-PCR was applied with ten random primers to examine the molecular diversity among methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolates in the hospitals and to investigate the genetic distance between them. 90 Isolates were collected from clinical specimens from Iraqi hospitals for a total of 90 isolates. Only 10 strains (11.11%) were found to be MRSA. From these 10 primers, only 9 gave clear amplification products. 91 fragment l
... Show MoreIn aspect-based sentiment analysis ABSA, implicit aspects extraction is a fine-grained task aim for extracting the hidden aspect in the in-context meaning of the online reviews. Previous methods have shown that handcrafted rules interpolated in neural network architecture are a promising method for this task. In this work, we reduced the needs for the crafted rules that wastefully must be articulated for the new training domains or text data, instead proposing a new architecture relied on the multi-label neural learning. The key idea is to attain the semantic regularities of the explicit and implicit aspects using vectors of word embeddings and interpolate that as a front layer in the Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory Bi-LSTM. First, we
... Show MoreErratum for Organic acid concentration thresholds for ageing of carbonate minerals: Implications for CO2 trapping/storage.