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.
<p>Analyzing X-rays and computed tomography-scan (CT scan) images using a convolutional neural network (CNN) method is a very interesting subject, especially after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In this paper, a study is made on 423 patients’ CT scan images from Al-Kadhimiya (Madenat Al Emammain Al Kadhmain) hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, to diagnose if they have COVID or not using CNN. The total data being tested has 15000 CT-scan images chosen in a specific way to give a correct diagnosis. The activation function used in this research is the wavelet function, which differs from CNN activation functions. The convolutional wavelet neural network (CWNN) model proposed in this paper is compared with regular convol
... Show More<p>Analyzing X-rays and computed tomography-scan (CT scan) images using a convolutional neural network (CNN) method is a very interesting subject, especially after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In this paper, a study is made on 423 patients’ CT scan images from Al-Kadhimiya (Madenat Al Emammain Al Kadhmain) hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, to diagnose if they have COVID or not using CNN. The total data being tested has 15000 CT-scan images chosen in a specific way to give a correct diagnosis. The activation function used in this research is the wavelet function, which differs from CNN activation functions. The convolutional wavelet neural network (CWNN) model proposed in this paper is compared with regular convol
... Show MoreThe objective of the study: is to investigate the correlations between the HER2 neu gene status with the clinicopathological parameters of infiltrative breast carcinoma. A total of seventy four Iraqi breast cancer patients were collected from one center (Department of Public Health) paraffin blocks were collected from histopathology department central public health laboratories, Bagdad, Iraq from 2014-2015. The cases which has been taken included invasive ductal and invasive lobular carcinoma type Women age were ranged from 24-80 years old. Evaluation of Her-2/neu gene amplification status was done using FISH and CISH techniques that showed a significant correlations with clinicopathological parameters.
News headlines are key elements in spreading news. They are unique texts written in a special language which enables readers understand the overall nature and importance of the topic. However, this special language causes difficulty for readers in understanding the headline. To illuminate this difficulty, it is argued that a pragmatic analysis from a speech act theory perspective is a plausible tool for a headline analysis. The main objective of the study is to pragmatically analyze the most frequently employed types of speech acts in the news headlines covering COVID-19 in Aljazeera English website. To this end, Bach and Harnish's (1979) Taxonomy of Speech Acts has been adopted to analyze the data. Thirty headlines have been collected f
... Show MoreObjective: Detection the level of YKL-40 biochemical marker and vitamin D level in sera of Iraqi uterine cancer
females' patients.
Methodology: This study included 90 female volunteers, 30 of them were healthy volunteers who were
considered as a control group, while sixty serum samples were collected from women patients suffering from
uterine tumors (30 malignant and 30 fibroid benign tumors), benign cases were considered as a disease
control group for malignant tumors. The average age of those females was 30-75 years, which matched the
control group. All the samples were collected from Azady hospital in Kirkuk and the gynecologic department at
Medical City in Baghdad during October /2012 to May /2013. All the serum
Drug consultation is an important part of pharmaceutical care. mobile phone call or text message can serve as an easy, effective, and implementable alternative to improving medication adherence and clinical outcomes by providing the information needed significantly for people with chronic illnesses like diabetes and hypertension particularly during pandemics like COVID-19 pandemic.