Background: Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a common health problem that has a worldwide distribution. Apart from the direct effect of the virus on the liver, there are many extrahepatic manifestations among which the probable effect on bone turnover associated with low bone mineral density (BMD). Objectives: This study aimed to determine the association between treated and untreated chronic HBV infection with BMD. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study which included a total of 48 patients with chronic HBV (28 patients treated with tenofovir-disoproxil-fumarate [TDF] antiviral drug and 20 patients have not yet started treatment). Other age- and sex-matched 30 apparently healthy individuals were recruited to represent the healthy controls. BMD was measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry on the anteroposterior lumbar spine (L1–L4 spine) views, from which T-score was calculated. Liver function tests were also evaluated from serum samples. Results: Treated patients showed a lower T‑score (−0.48 ± 0.72) than either healthy individuals (1.08 ± 0.84) or untreated patients (0.78 ± 0.51), with highly significant differences. In multivariate regression, only disease duration (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 9.71, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 4.8–16.68) and TDF treatment (adjusted OR = 6.4, 95% CI = 4.18–97.05) were significantly associated with BMD. Conclusions: Prolonged use of TDF in the treatment of HBV infection can significantly reduce BMD. Moreover, BMD can also be inversely affected in long-standing HBV, regardless of treatment regimen.
The general assumption of linear variation of earth pressures with depth on retaining structures is still controversial; investigations are yet required to determine those distributions of the passive earth pressure (PEP) accurately and deduce the corresponding centroid location. In particular, for rigid retaining walls, the calculation of PEP is strongly dependent on the type of wall movement. This paper presents a numerical analysis for studying the influence of wall movement on the PEP distribution on a rigid retaining wall and the passive earth thrust location. The numerical predictions are remarkably similar to existing experimental works as recorded on scaled test models and ful
This study presents the debonding propagation in single NiTi wire shape memory alloy into linear low-density polyethylene matrix composite the study of using the pull-out test. The aim of this study is to investigate the pull-out tests to check the interfacial strength of the polymer composite in two cases, with activation NiTinol wire and without activation. In this study, shape memory alloy NiTinol wire 2 mm diameter and linear fully annealed straight shape were used. The study involved experimental and finite element analysis and eventually comparison between them. This pull-out test is considered a substantial test because its results have a relation with behavior of smart composite materials. The pull-out test was carried out by a u
... Show MoreMalaria is a curative disease, with therapeutics available for patients, such as drugs that can prevent future malaria infections in countries vulnerable to malaria. Though, there is no effective malaria vaccine until now, although it is an interesting research area in medicine. Local descriptors of blood smear image are exploited in this paper to solve parasitized malaria infection detection problem. Swarm intelligence is used to separate the red blood cells from the background of the blood slide image in adaptive manner. After that, the effective corner points are detected and localized using Harris corner detection method. Two types of local descriptors are generated from the local regions of the effective corners which are Gabor based f
... Show MoreThe rate of births delivered by cesarean section (CS) has gone up substantially all over the world. Post-cesarean surgical site infection (SSI) is a common cause of maternal morbidity and mortality that results in prolonged period of hospitalization with increased cost and direct health implications, especially in low socioeconomic population, resource- restricted settings, and war- related conditions with internal forced movement. This study was aimed to find incidence of post cesarean section surgical site infection withthe accompanying risk factors.Pregnant ladies admitted to department of obstetrics and gynecology at Medical City Hospital in Baghdad who had undergone CSs were followed up prospectively from first of January 2017 till end
... Show MoreThe basic analytical formula for particle-hole state densities is derived based on the non-Equidistant Spacing Model (non-ESM) for the single-particle level density (s.p.l.d.) dependence on particle excitation energy u. Two methods are illustrated in this work, the first depends on Taylor series expansion of the s.p.l.d. about u, while the second uses direct analytical derivation of the state density formula. This treatment is applied for a system composing from one kind of fermions and for uncorrected physical system. The important corrections due to Pauli blocking was added to the present formula. Analytical comparisons with the standard formulae for ESM are made and it is shown that the solution reduces to earlier formulae providing m
... Show MoreAn effective two-body density operator for point nucleon system folded with two-body correlation functions, which take account of the effect of the strong short range repulsion and the strong tensor force in the nucleon-nucleon forces, is produced and used to derive an explicit form for ground state two-body charge density distributions (2BCDD's) and elastic electron scattering form factors F (q) for 19F, 27Al and 25Mg nuclei. It is found that the inclusion of the two-body short range correlations (SRC) has the feature of reducing the central part of the 2BCDD's significantly and increasing the tail part of them slightly, i.e. it tends to increase the probability of transferring the protons from the central region of the nucleus towards
... Show MoreThis paper presents a numerical simulation of the flow around elliptic groynes by using CFD software. The flow was simulated in a flume with 4m long, 0.4m wide, and 0.175m high with a constant bed slope. Moreover, the first Groyne placed at 1m from the flow inlet with a constant the Groyne height of 10cm and a 1cm thickness, and the width of Groynes equals 7cm. A submergence ratio of the elliptic Groynes of 75% was assumed, corresponding to a discharge of 0.0057m3/sec. The CFD model showed a good ability to simulate the flow around Groynes with good accuracy. The results of CFD software showed that when using double elliptic Groy
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