Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive airflow limitation that is preventable but not curable. It is associated with persistent symptoms that cause a considerable burden on individual productivity at work, and daily activities, and reduced quality of life, also burdening the healthcare system and society. Objectives: The study aims to measure the burden of COPD on patients in terms of daily activities and work productivity. It also seeks to investigate some inflammatory biomarkers' levels and their correlation with selected outcomes. Patients and Methods: A cross-sectional study on 120 stable COPD patients who were diagnosed and treated according to the GOLD guidelines at Kirkuk General Hospital's chest and Internal Medicine consultation clinics, and in private internist clinics in Kirkuk City, Iraq between January and April 2023. The Work Productivity and Activity Impairment Questionnaire (WPAI-COPD) measured the Burden of COPD. The symptom burden was assessed by the COPD assessment test (CAT). The level of IL-6 monoclonal antibodies was measured via a Roche Cobas 6000 analyzer and TNF-α using the ELISA sandwich technique. All these devices and machines were authorized by the Ministry of Health, Iraq. Results: The mean age was (54.1 ± 8.12) years, 62.5% being males and 37.5% being females; 41.7% were public sector employees, and 39.2% were self-employed. Due to COPD, the overall work loss was (45.9±18.91) days, the mean percentage of absenteeism was (10.9% ± 12.31%), activity impairment was (47.5% ±17.79%) among all patients, presenteeism was (40.8 ± 15.05%,) and COPD-related retirees were 14.2% of the study group. The mean CAT score (19.3±5.63) was high and the most troubling symptom among patients was chest tightness. WPAI-COPD scores were higher in older age and longer disease duration. The levels of biomarkers were above the reference ranges, the mean IL-6 level was (69.4 ± 35.29) pg/ml, and the mean TNF-α was (72.3 ± 22.45) pg/ ml. Conclusions: COPD patients exhibit a disease burden in terms of productivity loss at work and activity impairment that increases with aging and disease duration. COPD patients with low BMI are more prone to a decline in lung functions and to worse symptoms.
Background: Axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) is an inflammatory, systemic rheumatic condition that mostly affects the axial skeleton. Tenascin-C (TN-C) is a hexameric glycoprotein of considerable size, upregulated in many inflammatory conditions, while Interleukin-17 (IL-17) a cytokine that plays an important role in SpA symptoms. Objective: to investigate the upregulation between the serum levels of TN-C and IL-17 in Iraqi axSpA patients and the disease characteristics. Patients and Methods: Seventy-four axSpA patients and 28 matched controls were studied. Fifty-four patients received a tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi) and 20 did not. Serum TN-C and IL-17 concentrations were determined using the ELISA technique. The Bath Ankyl
... Show MoreBreast cancer is the most prevalent malignancy among women worldwide, in Iraq it ranks the first among the population and the leading cause of cancer related female mortality. This study is designed to investigate the correlations between serum and tissue markers in order to clarify their role in progression or regression breast cancer. Tumor Markers are groups of substances, mainly proteins, produced from cancer cell or from other cells in the body in response to tumor. The study was carried out from April 2018 to April 2019 with total number of 60 breast cancer women. The blood samples were collected from breast cancer women in postoperative and pretherapeutic who attended teaching oncology hospital of the medical city in Baghdad and
... Show MoreIntervention in International Relations from the concepts that are still highly
controversial among those he considers a breach of international law and the UN Charter and
in violation of the rule , and those who felt that the need provided, however, that this is linked
motives humanity recognized by the international community , because the international
variables proved the inadequacy of the principle of non-interference and the principle of
sovereignty as the traditional variables international , and therefore most of the international
practice came a bus with many of the behaviors that reflect a decline in its entirety to these
principles , and became adapt these principles with international reality is too compl
كان المؤتمر الآسيوي الأفريقي الأول الذي عُقد في مدينة باندونغ الاندونيسية عام 1955 هو المؤتمر هو الأول الذي اجتمعت فيه الدول الآسيوية والأفريقية بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية. كان مؤتمر باندونغ بمثابة نقطة الانطلاق نحو تأسيس حركة عدم الانحياز، والتي كانت مصر أحد أبرز أقطابها. شهد المؤتمر تقاربا في الآراء ووجهات النظر بين جمهورية مصر العربية وجمهورية الصين الشعبية، لا سيّما وإن الحكومة المصرية كانت قد تبنت س
... Show MoreThe Arab-Israeli conflict passed through several stages before reaching the final stage of normalization, namely conflict, conflict and public normalization. Thus, the UAE became the third country to establish official relations with Israel after Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. With the announcement of the normalization agreement, opinions varied between supporters and opponents of the idea of normalization with Israel, and some countries expressed their acceptance of establishing official relations between the Emirates and Israel, while others warned of the consequences of normalization, which they described as treachery. Although the UAE confirmed that the normalization agreement between the two sides was credited with stopping Israel's
... Show MoreReceipt date:9/1/2020 accepted date:11/24/2020 Publication date:12/31/2021
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
the Nile River and the Renaissance Dam is one of the most prominent factors that had an important role in the nature of relations between Egypt - Ethiopia, as they contributed to building a relationship that has common characteristics through the nature of the i
... Show MoreThe research aims to explain the role of the flexible budget in assessing the feedback resulting from deviations by comparing the actual results with the planned performance in light of the economic crisis that the world witnessed during the spread of Corona disease. As most companies, including the Electronic Industries Company, face the problem of controlling production costs and are trying hard to reduce these costs to the lowest level starting from measuring these costs and allocating them and distributing them to products. This helps in controlling deviations and thus the flexible budget becomes a tool that helps in controlling elements Costs
Receipt date: 8/8/2020 acceptance date: 9/11/2020 Publication date: 31/12/2021
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The American-Iranian relations have been characterized by tensions since the arrival of the guardian jurist regime in Iran to leadership in 1979, as it was considered a turning point not only in the cont
... Show MoreThe research deals with the topic of (formal formation and its semantic projections in the design interior spaces of daily newspapers buildings) including the research problem summarized by the following question: (does the formal formation do a semantic role in the design of the interior spaces?). The research objective has been evident in discovering strong and weak points in the formal formations and their semantic projections in the design of the interior spaces for the daily newspapers buildings, reaching at the best design foundations, and shedding light on the cognitive and scientific importance of the research, and the objective, temporal and spatial limits in addition to identifying the terms. The theoretical framework includes
... Show More This study titled “digital addiction and its relationship to social isolation among children in the autism spectrum from the point of view of their parents” in which the
researcher addressed an important topic which is knowledge of digital addiction in a
child with autism spectrum and its relationship to social isolation in them.
The study aimed to dhed the light on the digital addiction in a spectrum child Autism
from the point of view of their parents، by knowing the extent of addiction of children
in the autism spectrum، and identifying the relationship between electronic addiction and the social isolation of children in the autism spectrum.The study presented
several hypotheses،