Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a collection of chronic, recurrent inflammatory illnesses of the gastrointestinal system, including Crohn's disease (CD). Infliximab is one of the biological medications used to treat CD. Therapeutic drug monitoring has evolved as a treatment in IBD, aiming to optimize benefit while meeting more demanding, objective end criteria. Objective: To determine the achievement of target trough level (TL), develop anti-drug antibodies (ADAs) to infliximab, assess response to therapy, and study TL relations with different variables. Methods: The present study was cross-sectional and conducted from May 2022 to November 2022. It included 40 CD patients allotted into 2 groups: group 1 patients achieved the TL target, and group 2 patients did not achieve the TL target. Results: Twenty-two patients achieved target TL, while 18 patients did not. Dose escalation is recommended for 11 patients, switching therapy for 15 patients, and continuing the same dosage regimen for 14 patients. In addition, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein, serum calprotectin and ADAs were significantly lower in patients who achieved target infliximab TL. Only serum calprotectin can be used to predict the achievement of the target TL of infliximab. Conclusions: Therapeutic drug monitoring of infliximab to determine the TL and ADAs can help to explain why some patients do not respond to this drug. Serum calprotectin may be used as a novel marker to predict the TL and response to infliximab.
Background: Prolactin is a hormone, as well as a cytokine which is synthesized and secreted from the anterior pituitary gland and various extra pituitary sites including immune cells under control of a superdistal promoter that contains a single nucleotide polymorphism -1149 G/T. Rheumatoid Arthritis has been associated with increased serum prolactin levels.Objectives: To investigate the association of the extra pituitary -1149 G/T promoter polymorphism among Iraqi rheumatoid arthritis patients and prolactin levels.Methods: We tested 73 patients with rheumatoid arthritis and 40 healthy individuals. The DNA samples were genotyped using the Polymerase Chain Reaction-Restriction fragment Length Polymorphism method and the levels of prolacti
... Show MoreThe aim of this study is to determine serum IL-33 levels and atherogenic index of plasma (AIP) .Forty patients with moderate activity of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and forty healthy individuals as control group were enrolled in this study, age (25-45) years. Disease activity was assessed in patients by erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR),C-reactive protein (CRP) and rheumatoid factor(RF) .Also lipid profile(cholesterol TC, triglyceride TG, low density lipoprotein LDL-C, very low density lipoprotein VLDL and high density lipoprotein HDL-C), AIP, and IL-33 were determined in all subjects. The results revealed a significant increase in ESR,CRP and RF , TG, VLDL,AIP and IL-33,while is a significant decrease in HDL concentration in patients gr
... Show MoreAnalyzing sentiment and emotions in Arabic texts on social networking sites has gained wide interest from researchers. It has been an active research topic in recent years due to its importance in analyzing reviewers' opinions. The Iraqi dialect is one of the Arabic dialects used in social networking sites, characterized by its complexity and, therefore, the difficulty of analyzing sentiment. This work presents a hybrid deep learning model consisting of a Convolution Neural Network (CNN) and the Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) to analyze sentiment and emotions in Iraqi texts. Three Iraqi datasets (Iraqi Arab Emotions Data Set (IAEDS), Annotated Corpus of Mesopotamian-Iraqi Dialect (ACMID), and Iraqi Arabic Dataset (IAD)) col
... Show MoreBackground: Undergraduate dental students are more susceptible to situations of stress that affected quality of sleep, such profiles of stress may result in sleep bruxism and/or awake bruxism, parafunctions that can affect oral and general health. The aim of the study was to evaluate the association of sleep bruxism, awake bruxism and sleep quality among dental students. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study was performed including 260 Iraqi dental students from university of Baghdad aged from 20to25years old. Students enrolled in the third and fifth class participated in the study. The Pittsburgh Sleep Questionnaire Index (PSQI) was used for data collection. The PSQI was distributed during lecture classes. Sleep bruxism and awake
... Show MoreThe Iraqi construction industry suffers from many issues that lead to many design errors, clashes, delays and cost overruns. Therefore, applying constructability will prevent these issues from happening, as it has proven its positive effect in different projects around the world. The goal of this paper is to use building information modelling (BIM) to assess the constructability, provide the opportunities for the project stakeholders to choose the best constructable design alternative and find the affection of applying constructability on project cost. The practical side of this research consists of two parts: in the first part, 37 factors are collected from the literature review as factors that effect on constructability. After tha
... Show MoreThe construction industry plays a crucial role in the countries' economy, especially in the developed country. This point encourages the concerned institution to use new techniques and integrate many techniques and methods to maximize the benefits. The main objective of this research is to evaluate the use of risk management, value management, and building information modeling in the Iraqi construction industry. The evaluation process aims at two objectives. The direct objective was to evaluate the knowledge in risk management (RM), value management (VM), and building information modeling (BIM). The indirect objective was to support the participants with information related to the main items mentioned. The questionnaire
... Show MoreThe current research contains four chapters. The first topic included the methodological framework that included the problem of research and the need for it, and then the importance of the research, and then the aim of the research, its limits and the definition of terms linguistically, conventionally and procedurally. The second chapter (the theoretical framework) contained two topics, the topic The first is titled: The Outward Vision in Child Theater Performances, while the second topic was titled: Presentation Technology in Child Theater, Chapter Four (Research Procedures), which organized the research community and analyzed its sample, and the fourth chapter contained research results, conclusions and recommendations. The prop
... Show MoreIn the framework of this study, the phenomenon of transfer is probed pragma-linguistically and socio-linguistically concerning marriage situations among Iraqi EFL learners. The study also strives to look at the refusal strategies most commonly employed by Iraqi female English as a foreign Language (EFL) learners compared to their counterparts, American native speakers of English. The study involved 70 female participants who answered a Discourse Completion Task (DCT), which contained ten marriage proposals to be refused. Each situation entailed refusal of a person from a higher, an equal, and lower status. The researchers adapted Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy of refusal for analyzing the data comprehensively. The
... Show MoreIn the framework of this study, the phenomenon of transfer is probed pragma-linguistically and socio-linguistically concerning marriage situations among Iraqi EFL learners. The study also strives to look at the refusal strategies most commonly employed by Iraqi female English as a foreign Language (EFL) learners compared to their counterparts, American native speakers of English. The study involved 70 female participants who answered a Discourse Completion Task (DCT), which contained ten marriage proposals to be refused. Each situation entailed refusal of a person from a higher, an equal, and lower status. The researchers adapted Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy of refusal for analyzing the data comprehensively.
... Show MoreStudy showed structure of pecten oculi in the Kestrel Falco tinnunculus L.was
Pleated type and consisted of 17 folds which were thick. While in the Collared Dove
Streptopelia decaocto F. was Vaned type and consisted of 13 folds and it described
thin. The illustrated histological study of pecten oculi folds in the Kestrel and the
Collared Dove was composed of large number of capillaries, large blood vessels and
pigment cells which were few in Kestrel compare with the Collared Dove. The bridge
in the Kestrel and the Collared Dove pecten oculi was consisted of connective tissue,
many pigment cells, and contains on little capillaries and it linked the membrane to
the internal limiting membrane of the retina in the Kes