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.
ABSTRUCT
The main aim of this research has been associated with the study of relationship between competitive intelligence and strategic risk, and to deduct their specific trends, which are interpreted as predicted by research hypotheses according to a review of literature including prior studies. The basic theme of these hypotheses is related to the probability that declining levels of strategic risk and competitive positions of industrial companies is dependent upon the growing capacity to stay ahead of competitors in the market.
A purposive non-random
... Show MoreThe quality of groundwater is just as important as its quantity. The kinds and concentration of salts in groundwater depend on the environment, movement, and the source of the groundwater. During the field work, 20 samples have been collected from water wells from Al-Salman basin for two seasons represent wet and dry seasons in November 2017 and April 2018. After water well samples have been analyzed the Electrical conductivity values range from (2260 to 5500) μS/cm for dry season and range from (2540 to 5630) μS/cm for wet season, the Total dissolved solids values range from (1289 to 3582) ppm for dry season and range from (1710 to 3960) ppm for wet season, and pH values range from (7.11 to 7.3) for dry and wet seasons. The Hydroc
... Show MoreThe aim of this study to determine the genetic distance and relationship among some Iraqi date palm cultivars by using the Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique. Molecular analysis was performed by using 10 random primers. These primers produced 176 fragment lines across 14 cultivars, Of these, 166 or 94.3% were polymorphic. The size of the amplified bands ranged between 200-2250 bp. The genetic polymorphism value of each primer was determined and ranged between 7.5-16.9%. In terms of unique banding patterns, the most characteristic banding pattern was for the Barhee cultivar with primer OP-M06 and for the Khadhrawy Mandily cultivar with primer OP-C02. Genetic distance values ranged from 0.868 to 0.125 among studied date palm
... Show MoreThe paper present design of a control structure that enables integration of a Kinematic neural controller for trajectory tracking of a nonholonomic differential two wheeled mobile robot, then proposes a Kinematic neural controller to direct a National Instrument mobile robot (NI Mobile Robot). The controller is to make the actual velocity of the wheeled mobile robot close the required velocity by guarantees that the trajectory tracking mean squire error converges at minimum tracking error. The proposed tracking control system consists of two layers; The first layer is a multi-layer perceptron neural network system that controls the mobile robot to track the required path , The second layer is an optimization layer ,which is impleme
... Show MoreBackground: Anaemia is a major public health concern and is one of the most prevalent health issue in women within reproductive age group.
Objective: to assess maternal knowledge related to anaemia during pregnancy.
Type of the study: A cross –sectional study.
Method: The study including 200 mothers who attended selected primary health care centres, Baghdad during November and December 2015, they completed a previously prepared questionnaire coveringsocio-demographic characteristics and knowledge regarding anaemia in 4 main domains. The responses were analysed by using frequency, percentage and percent score for each statement a
... Show MoreThe aim of this study to determine the genetic distance and relationship among some Iraqi date palm cultivars by using the Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique. Molecular analysis was performed by using 10 random primers. These primers produced 176 fragment lines across 14 cultivars, Of these, 166 or 94.3% were polymorphic. The size of the amplified bands ranged between 200-2250 bp. The genetic polymorphism value of each primer was determined and ranged between 7.5-16.9%. In terms of unique banding patterns, the most characteristic banding pattern was for the Barhee cultivar with primer OP-M06 and for the Khadhrawy Mandily cultivar with primer OP-C02. Genetic distance values ranged from 0.868 to 0.125 among studied date palm
... Show More<span lang="EN-US">The fundamental of a downlink massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) energy- issue efficiency strategy is known as minimum mean squared error (MMSE) implementation degrades the performance of a downlink massive MIMO energy-efficiency scheme, so some improvements are adding for this precoding scheme to improve its workthat is called our proposal solution as a proposed improved MMSE precoder (PIMP). The energy efficiency (EE) study has also taken into mind drastically lowering radiated power while maintaining high throughput and minimizing interference issues. We further find the tradeoff between spectral efficiency (SE) and EE although they coincide at the beginning but later their interests become con
... Show MoreIn this paper, a miniaturized 2 × 2 electro-optic plasmonic Mach– Zehnder switch (MZS) based on metal–polymer–silicon hybrid waveguide is presented. Adiabatic tapers are designed to couple the light between the plasmonic phase shifter, implemented in each of the MZS arms, and the 3-dB input/output directional couplers. For 6 µm-long hybrid plasmonic waveguide supported by JRD1 polymer (r33= 390 pm/V), a π-phase shift voltage of 2 V is obtained. The switch is designed for 1550 nm operation wavelength using COMSOL software and characterizes by 2.3 dB insertion loss, 9.9 fJ/bit power consumption, and 640 GHz operation bandwidth