Acromegaly is a condition that results from excessive growth hormone production by the anterior pituitary gland. Prolidase (PLD) is the only known human enzyme that can hydrolyze dipeptides with an amino acid at their C terminus. Reports indicate that PLD activity serves as a marker for oxidative stress in numerous disorders such as diabetes, diabetic neuropathy, chronic liver diseases, and osteoporosis. The current study aims to estimate the values of PLD, its correlation with the rest of the parameters, and ROC in acromegaly patients. A group of 61 patients with confirmed acromegaly were collected from the National Diabetic Center, Mustansyrriah University, and 60 control groups were analyzed in the same place for the parameters of the biochemical study. Acromegalic patients had changes in the levels of biochemical markers like PLD, growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor-1, and fasting blood glucose. There was a high difference (p < 0.001) between the patient group and the healthy control group. The current study shows that PLD levels are higher in patients with acromegaly than in the healthy control group. The sensitivity and specificity for PLD were high in the patient group versus the healthy control. The PLD may be a novel biomarker of acromegaly activity, and there may be an increase in fasting blood glucose, growth hormone, and IGF-1 in acromegaly patients.
Aneurysms of the cortical branches of the middle cerebral artery (MCA) are rare. They usually are secondary to traumatic or infectious etiologies and are rarely idiopathic. The specific characteristics of idiopathic aneurysms in such location are not well defined in the literature. The authors report a rare case of a ruptured giant idiopathic cortical MCA aneurysm with review of the available literature on this clinical entity.
A 24-year-old female presented with headache, disturbed level of consciousness, and right-sided weakness. Imaging studies showed a left frontoparietal intracer
Furfural is a toxic aromatic aldehyde that can cause a severe environmental problem especially the wastewater drown from petroleum refinery units. In the present work, a useless by-product from local furniture manufacturing industry; sawdust was used as raw material for the preparation of activated carbon which is chemically activated with phosphoric acid. The effect of adsorption variables which include initial pH of solution (2-9), agitation speed (50-250) rpm, agitation time (15-120) min, initial concentration of furfural (50-250) ppm, and amount of adsorbent material (0.5-2.5) g for the three adsorbents used (prepared activated carbon, commercial activated carbon and raw sawdust) were investigated in a batch process
... Show MoreThe applications of hot plasma are many and numerous applications require high values of the temperature of the electrons within the plasma region. Improving electron temperature values is one of the important processes for using this specification in plasma for being adopted in several modern applications such as nuclear fusion, plating operations and in industrial applications. In this work, theoretical computations were performed to enhance electron temperature under dense homogeneous plasma. The effect of power and duration time of pulsed Nd:YAG laser was studied on the heating of plasmas by inverse bremsstrahlung for several values for the electron density ratio. There results for these ca
... Show MoreBackground: Angiogenesis is defined as the formation of new blood vessels. However, angiogenesis in cancer will lead to tumour growth and metastasis. Therefore, anti-angiogenesis is one of the ways to slow down growth and spreading of tumour. Moringa oleifera is also known as a “Miracle tree” which has high nutritive value and various therapeutics effect in different parts of the plant. This study aims to determine the anti-angiogenic property of Moringa oleifera leaves extract by using chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay. Materials and Methods: The extracts were prepared by decoction method using methanol and water. The qualitative phytochemical screening was carried out for
... Show MoreVarious speech enhancement Algorithms (SEA) have been developed in the last few decades. Each algorithm has its advantages and disadvantages because the speech signal is affected by environmental situations. Distortion of speech results in the loss of important features that make this signal challenging to understand. SEA aims to improve the intelligibility and quality of speech that different types of noise have degraded. In most applications, quality improvement is highly desirable as it can reduce listener fatigue, especially when the listener is exposed to high noise levels for extended periods (e.g., manufacturing). SEA reduces or suppresses the background noise to some degree, sometimes called noise suppression alg
... Show MoreThe electrospun nanofibers membranes have gained considerable interest in water filtration applications. In this work, the fabrication and characterization of the electrospun polyacrylonitrile-based nonwoven nanofibers membrane are reported. Then, the membrane's performance and antifouling properties were evaluated in removing emulsified oil using a cross flow filtration system. The membranes were fabricated with different polyacrylonitrile (PAN) concentrations (8, 11, and 14 wt. %) in N, N-Dimethylformamide (DMF) solvent resulted in various average fiber sizes, porosity, contact angle, permeability, oil rejection, and antifouling properties. Analyses of surface morphology of the fabricated membranes before and after oil removal revealed
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