Objectives: Dickkopf-1 (DKK-1) is WNT/b-catenin pathway antagonist which plays a detrimental role in the development of diabetic retinopathy (DR). This research aimed to assess serum DKK-1 levels in diabetic patients who have and have not developed DR and, compare them with the control subjects finding out whether we can use it as an indicator for DR early diagnosis and to find out which one of the widely used two groups of antidiabetic treatments had the greater effect on this biomarker and hence on the progression of DR. Methods: The study participants were divided into two subgroups: First, 70 patients (36 male, 34 female) with type 2 diabetes mellitus, among them 35 patients diagnosed with DR and 35 with no evidence of DR, and secondly, non-diabetic controls (11 male, 9 female) were selected from the patients attending Ibn AL-Haitham hospital for ophthalmology and a specialized center for endocrinology and diabetes. Venous blood samples of all participants were drawn after an overnight fast, and serum samples were stored at -20ºC until DKK-1 assay. Results: Serum DKK-1 showed significantly lower levels in diabetic patients with (6.1 ± 2 ng/mL) or without DR (14 ± 6.2 ng/mL) when compared to those of controls (34 ± 12.25 ng/mL) (p 0.05). Furthermore, serum DKK-1 levels were lower in the late stage of DR compared to the early stage 5.6 ± 1.7 and 7 ± 1.9 ng/mL, respectively. Furthermore, DPP-4 inhibitors cause a better increment in DKK-1 levels when compared to SU in the NDR group. Conclusions: Reduced serum levels of DKK-1 are related to the existence and worsening of DR and have the prospect to serve as an indicator for this condition.
Background: Water-pipe can be defined as a single or multi stemmed device that used to vaporize and smoke flavored tobacco whose smoke is passed via water vase before inhalation. Water-pipe smokers are at risk of exposure to many toxic chemicals that are not filtered by water, as well as risk of infectious diseases when the mouth piece of the water-pipe is shared. This study was carried out to investigate the effect of water pipe on the oral health. Materials and Methods: Sixty persons were included in this study aged between 22 and 23 years. Forty persons were coffee shop workers for at least five years, half of them were water-pipe smokers (active smokers) and the other weren’t smokers (passive smoker), the last group was the co
... Show More(January 25, 2011) represented a real opportunity to bring about fundamental changes in Egyptian foreign policy and to start a new phase that would cut off all the negative and problematic aspects of Egyptian politics in the period before the revolution. Through the employment of Egypt's huge balance and the role of historical is a civilization rooted in the roots of thousands of years and Islamic reference represented over more than a thousand years the Islamic medium of religion in the start of vision and tools to achieve the Egyptian national interest, and safeguarding Egyptian national security in its comprehensive sense. The research attempts to answer a central question: Is there a role for Egyptian soft power in the Islamic world
... Show MorePotential pattern of foodborne bacteriophages against multidrug-resistant pathogens was a promising hygienic strategy module. Post-antibiotics era becomes evident due to emerging of dramatic episodes of infectious foci harboring biofilm and multidrug-resistant pathogens transferred mainly throughout food chain. Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) were struggling among these new infectious emergencies. Phenotypic epigenetic transit tolerant drift cascaded by genetic resistant shift behaviors of recalcitrant VRE forbidden clones recovered from mastitis cases in Cows from territories of Abu-Ghraib, Al- Fudhaliyah and Al-Sadrya in Baghdad ecosystem were combated by redirected lytic bacteriophages cocktails recovered from the same raw-milk ec
... Show MoreQuality function deployment tool is trying to improve health services through this study that will be applied in health sector environment , and be based on applying quality function deployment tool (QFD) TO preferable evaluation of main patients requirements in order to determine the technical requirements that need most attention across improving and developing health services .
Main requirements are determined to patients lying in the hospital (under research) which is (educational Baghdad \ medicine city office) in Baghdad, and other technical requirements through pers
... Show MoreThis article is part of the bigger project of my PhD thesis which investigates the influence of the British war poetry of the twentieth century on the development of Iraqi poetry in the century/Plymouth University/UK. The article examines the influences of British poetry on the development of the forms of poetry in Iraq after the Second World War. The aim is to shed the light on the creation of the ‘third product’ or the Iraqi poetry that shows the influences of the translated British poetry or the ‘second product’; which was written in prose for it is almost impossible to transfer the rhyme and rhythm of poetry from one language to another. Those who translated the poetry where also the pioneers of the major formal revolution in Ar
... Show MoreThe modification of hydrophobic rock surfaces to the water-wet state via nanofluid treatment has shown promise in enhancing their geological storage capabilities and the efficiency of carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen (H2) containment. Despite this, the specific influence of silica (SiO2) nanoparticles on the interactions between H2, brine, and rock within basaltic formations remains underexplored. The present study focuses on the effect of SiO2 nanoparticles on the wettability of Saudi Arabian basalt (SAB) under downhole conditions (323 K and pressures ranging from 1 to 20 MPa) by using the tilted plate technique to measure the contact angles between H2/brine and the rock surfaces. The findings reveal that the SAB's hydrophobicity intensif
... Show MoreThis work is to examine the employment of curved fins to boost heat recovery in a double-pipe containment system filled with phase change material (PCM). The study utilizes CFD modeling, validated against experimental benchmarks, to evaluate how various geometric parameters of curved fins affect system performance. Findings demonstrate that adjusting the fin angular curvature from 60◦ to 180◦ yielded a 22.1 % decrease in the time required for solidification while simultaneously improving heat recovery efficiency by 32.0 %. When the fin base spacing was increased from 5 mm to 15 mm, the system showed a 14.5 % solidification time saving and a 20.9 % heat recovery improvement. Furthermore, modifying the joining angle between upper fins fro
... Show MoreWith the development of communication technologies for mobile devices and electronic communications, and went to the world of e-government, e-commerce and e-banking. It became necessary to control these activities from exposure to intrusion or misuse and to provide protection to them, so it's important to design powerful and efficient systems-do-this-purpose. It this paper it has been used several varieties of algorithm selection passive immune algorithm selection passive with real values, algorithm selection with passive detectors with a radius fixed, algorithm selection with passive detectors, variable- sized intrusion detection network type misuse where the algorithm generates a set of detectors to distinguish the self-samples. Practica
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