Background: Behçet’s disease (BD) is a disorder of systemic inflammatory condition. Its important features are represented by recurrent oral, genital ulcerations and eye lesions. Aims. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate and compare cytological changes using morphometric analysis of the exfoliated buccal mucosal cells in Behçet’s disease patients and healthy controls, and to evaluate the clinical characteristics of Behçet’s disease. Methods. Twenty five Behçet’s disease patients have been compared to 25 healthy volunteers as a control group. Papanicolaou stain was used for staining the smears taken from buccal epithelial cells to be analyzed cytomorphometrically. The image analysis software has been used to

Human beta-defenses (hBDs) are antimicrobial peptides involved in innate immune protection, and their association with the risk of respiratory allergy has been proposed. Therefore, this study sought to evaluate this association in allergic rhinitis (AR) and asthma (AS) of Iraqi patients. A case-control study was conducted to investigate serum levels of hBD1, hBD2, hBD3, and hBD4 in 52 AR and 60 AS patients and 61 healthy controls (HC). The hBDs were determined using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits. Results revealed that median levels of hBD1, hBD2, and hBD3 were significantly elevated in the serum of AR and AS patients compared with HC (p < 0.01). Levels of hBD4 were also elevated in AR and AS patients but the differen

Abstract

The current study aims to evaluate levels of metabolic hormones and lipid profile in a sample of growth hormone (GH) deficient patients. Seventy five GH deficient patients and twenty healthy subjects used as control group have been participated in this study during their attendance to the National Diabetic Center for Treatment and Research/Al-Mustansiriya University. The studied subjects’ ages were with a range (3-15 years). Blood samples were collected from the studied subjects to determine levels of basal GH, GH₂ and GH₃ after 1 hr and 1/30 hr provocation with clonidine, respectively; insulin like growth factor (IGF-1); levels of metabolic hormones [thyroid profile: triiodo

The biomarker significance of three chemokines (CXCL8, CXCL10 and CXCL16) was evaluated in sera of 45 breast cancer (BC) and 28 benign breast lesion (BBL) patients, as well as 20 control women. Clinical stage and tumor expression of estrogen (ER), progesterone (PgR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER-2) receptors were considered in this evaluation. The results demonstrated that CXCL8, CXCL10 and CXCL16 showed a significant increased median in BC and BBL patients compared to control (CXCL8: 47.3 and 25.7 vs. 15.0; CXCL10: 37.6 and 30.7 vs. 13.1; CXCL16; 27.9 and 25.2 vs. 19.2 pg/ml, respectively). The increased levels of CXCL8 and CXCL16 were more pronounced in triple-negative and HER-2 positive p

Leishmania tropica is a species of flagellate parasites that infects humans and the cause of the disease cutaneous leishmaniasis, which is the most common form of leishmaniasis. It is one of the major parasites, which have high prevalence than other parasites in Iraq. The aim was to investigate the role of HLA alleles in susceptibility to cutaneous leishmaniasis infection in Baghdad in a sample of Iraqi patients. Cross sectional study (thirty Iraqi Arab Muslims patients with Leishmania tropica infection and thirty Iraqi Arab Muslims healthy persons) were participated in this study. Patients were consulted Department of Dermatology in Medical city Teaching hospital and AL Yarmook Teaching hospital for the period between March 2014 till May 2

The non-specific response of immunity has developed as the initial barrier for human protection from invading pathogens, which comprises certain pathogen recognition receptors (PRR) for instance toll-like receptors (TLRs). Toll like receptor 2 (TLR 2) is capable of recognizing pathogen associated molecular patterns (PAMP) coded by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. To evaluate TLR 2 level in sera of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) patients. About 120 subjects, involving 80 patients with pulmonary TB including 40 multiple drug resistance (MDR), 20 recently diagnosed pulmonary TB (RD) and 20 recurrent TB patients named as old cases (OC), in addition to 40 apparently healthy individuals were studied as control group. Sera from 68 TB patients

Background: Dysfunction of sinoatrial node is a set of abnormal rhythms which are resulted from the sinoatrial node malfunction of the sinus node, the chief natural cardiac pacemaker. The common, and occasionally, the single method for treatment of heart arrhythmias was implantation of pacemaker, which reduce symptoms exactly occurs after implantation. Aim: To detect the role of smoking on cardiac electrophysiology parameters in sinus node dysfunction in Iraqi patients such as SNRT and AH. Methods: A cross sectional study, was conducted on 59 patient ranging between 20-50 years old and involving 35 female and 24 male patients, suffering from an unexplained symptoms of sinoatrial node dysfunction (SND). The enrolled participants were gathere