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.
The present study aimed to determine the serum sex hormone levels among Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) patients before and after 3 months of oral administration of 5-α reductase inhibitor(finasteride). Forty BPH patients and 40 healthy men from Amara city were involved in this study, their ages were between 40-59 year. They were all subjected to direct estimation of hormones by MinVidas method including Testosterone (T), Estradiol (E2), Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH), Luteinizing Hormone (LH), Prolactin (PRL), and Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) before and after 3 months of treatment with 5α-reductase inhibitor (finasteride) (the healthy individuals didn’t take finasteride).The results showed that T level was significantly lo
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Viscosity is one of the most important governing parameters of the fluid flow, either in the porous media or in pipelines. So it is important to use an accurate method to calculate the oil viscosity at various operating conditions. In the literature, several empirical correlations have been proposed for predicting crude oil viscosity. However, these correlations are limited to predict the oil viscosity at specified conditions. In the present work, an extensive experimental data of oil viscosities collected from different samples of Iraqi oil reservoirs was applied to develop a new correlation to calculate the oil viscosity at various operating conditions either for dead, satura
... Show MoreBackground: Pneumonia is the common lower respiratory tract infection among pediatrics, especially under five; it is a common cause of under-five children morbidity and mortality. Objectives of study: To identify nurses' perceptions toward therapeutic strategies for children with pneumonia and to find the association between their perceptions and their demographic variables. Methods: A Convenient sample of 46 nurses in Baghdad city from three hospitals) Kadhimiya Hospital for Children, Central Teaching Hospital of Pediatrics, and Child Welfare Teaching Hospital) included in the study to identify their perceptions regarding pneumonia in children. Results: The results of the study present that most of the nurses' participants in the a
... Show MoreBackground: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is one of the most common GI disorders in people under 50 years of age.
Objective: To Formulate an overview about demographics of IBS and patterns of presentation, to determine IBS patients severity ranking, and to recognize the main regimens with their patient satisfaction.
Methods: This is a cross sectional clinical study that is conducted in Outpatient Consultant Internal Medicine Clinic in Al-Kindy Teaching Hospital from 11/12/2017 to 24/12/2017. The patients suffering from IBS are diagnosed by a consultant according to the symptom-based Rome criteria for functional GI disorders, by implementing a questionnaire collecting thorough information. 77 cases of IBS patients were collected (2
The question about the existence of correlation between the parameters A and m of the Paris function is re-examined theoretically for brittle material such as alumina ceramic (Al2O3) with different grain size. Investigation about existence of the exponential function which fit a good approximation to the majority of experimental data of crack velocity versus stress intensity factor diagram. The rate theory of crack growth was applied for data of alumina ceramics samples in region I and making use of the values of the exponential function parameters the crack growth rate theory parameters were estimated.
Background: Environmental chemicals are thought to
adversely affect human reproductive function.
Objective : To estimate the concentration of cadmium(Cd)
, lead ( Pb ) and Zinc ( Zn ) in serum and seminal plasma
among infertile men .
Methods: A sample of 70 infertile men was investigated.
The relationship of trace elements concentration in serum and
seminal plasma was studied in relation to sperm density,
motility and sperm count.
Results: Except for Zinc the concentration of (Pb) and (Cd)
were generally higher in serum than in seminal plasma. The
mean concentration of (Zn) in seminal plasma was more than
25 times higher than in serum There were no statistical
significant differences observed in the