Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging zoonotic disease caused by the new respiratory virus SARS-CoV2. It has a tropism in the lung tissues where excess target receptors exist. Periostin plays a role in subepithelial fibrosis associated with bronchial asthma. Since the Coronavirus's target is the human respiratory system, Periostin has been recently described as a valuable new biomarker in the diagnosis and evaluation of disease in patients with COVID-19 lung involvement. Objectives: To assess the level of Periostin in the serum of COVID-19 patients and to correlate its role in disease severity and prognosis. Subjects and Methods: Periostin serum levels were measured for 63 patients attending three main COVID-19 Control Centers in Baghdad, compared to 25 healthy subjects, using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) from January 2021 to April 2022. Results: Serum levels of Periostin among studied groups with (mild - moderate, severe - critical, post-COVID, and controls) were (17.3, 664, 597, and 48) ng/dl respectively. The serum concentration of Periostin was highly significant in (severe- critical and post-COVID) than in other groups. Conclusions: The elevated level of serum Periostin in COVID-19 patients correlated with disease severity and post-COVID lung complications. The high Periostin level is consistent with high inflammatory markers, which might be used as an indicator of COVID-19 severity and predict a bad prognosis.
Recent accumulated evidences suggest that prolactin is an important immunomodulator and may have a role in the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The aim of this study was to assess the frequency of hyperprolactinemia in women with SLE and to evaluate its correlation with disease flares. Serum prolactin levels were measured in 62 women with SLE and 50 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. In patients and control groups prolactin levels were determined by immunoradiometric assay (IRMA). The prolactin level was found to be higher than normal rang in (40.3%) of SLE patients in active stage versus only (8.06%) of the same SLE patients but in the inactive stage and in (4%) of control group, the elevation was ranging between mi
... Show MoreThe use of containers in transportation leads to the reduction in time and effort of the process of loading and unloading of goods as well as protecting the goods from damage and breakage and to reduce the financial costs.
. This development has led also to make changes in the sizes and capacity of ships, therefore changes in the ports must be taken place where they must be provided with an appropriate depth for such vessels, that means the increase in the depth of ports and the establishment of wide storage yards and to provide appropriate mechanisms for handling process.
In this study, the researcher has dealt with this type of transport business in Iraqi ports, namely:
1- Khur Al-Zubair port.
2- Um Qaser port.
In order
The present study aimed to evaluate the levels of total immunoglobulin E and percentage count of eosinophil in some of allergic disease. Blood sample collected from 210 patients (110 female, 100 male) with allergic disease (allergic asthma, allergic rhinitis, and urticaria) their age between 10-70 years and 50 healthy control their age between 23-52 years. A highly significant (P<0.01) increase in the mean serum total IgE in patients with asthma (503.54 ± 63.49 IU/ml), Allergic rhinitis (442.77 ± 95.76 IU/ml) and urticaria (489.53 ± 69.68 IU/ml) as a compared with healthy controls (23.67 ± 5.81 IU/ml).There was a significant difference in percentage count of eosinophil in patients groups allergic asthma 4.37 ± 0.52% ,allergic rhinitis
... Show MoreThis study investigated the prevalence of quinolones resistance proteins encoding genes (qnr genes) and co-resistance for fluoroquinolones and β-lactams among clinical isolates of Klebsiella pneumoniae. Out of 150 clinical samples, 50 isolates of K. pneumoniae were identified according to morphological and biochemical properties. These isolates were collected from different clinical samples, including 15 (30%) urine, 12 (24%) blood, 9 (18%) sputum, 9 (18%) wound, and 5 (10%) burn. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) assay revealed that 15 (30%) of isolates were resistant to ciprofloxacin (≥4µg/ml), 11 (22%) of isolates were resistant to levofloxacin (≥8 µg/ml), 21 (42%) of isolates were re
... Show MoreReintervention after balloon angioplasty is often considered inevitable in children with coarctation of the aorta (COA). The present study aimed to evaluate predictors of re-intervention after balloon angioplasty for COA, with the goal of identifying patient and procedural characteristics that may influence long-term outcomes
This research aims to provide insight into the Spatial Autoregressive Quantile Regression model (SARQR), which is more general than the Spatial Autoregressive model (SAR) and Quantile Regression model (QR) by integrating aspects of both. Since Bayesian approaches may produce reliable estimates of parameter and overcome the problems that standard estimating techniques, hence, in this model (SARQR), they were used to estimate the parameters. Bayesian inference was carried out using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques. Several criteria were used in comparison, such as root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and coefficient of determination (R^2). The application was devoted on dataset of poverty rates acro
... Show MoreThe present study was designed to determine the predictive capacity of Coronavirus’s impact, as well as, the psychological adjustment among university students in Oman. A total of (566) male and female students were employed to form the swtudy sample. The descriptive method was used. The findings showed that there is a significantly university student affected by Coronavirus; the dimensions of scale were arranged as follows: the Academic requirements of pandemic came first, the social communication came second, and the academic future stress came in third. The results also showed that Psychological Adjustment among University Students was affected by the Coronavirus pandemic, the average was low. Also, the result showed that the Corona
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