Leishmania parasites are the causative agent of leishmaniasis. Many studies are inspecting chemical drugs, including the use of miltefosine and amphotericin B, but curative values may be limited for these drugs with side effects due to the chemical origin, therefore, investigating less toxic therapies is essential. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of artemisinin on Iraqi strain of Leishmania tropica, by experimental macrophage ex vivo infection of amastigotes into mouse macrophage cell-line RAW264.7. Different concentrations (100, 200, 300, 400, 500)μM of artemisinin (ART) were screened to examine the susceptibility of L. tropica amastigotes to invade macrophage cell line along three times of follow up (24, 48 and 72) hours. Results showed that artemisinin had a cytotoxic effect on the parasite in which a significance difference (P < 0.05) in cell viability was observed and IC50 was calculated as 182.6 μM after 48 hours treatment. In addition, percentage of infectivity of intracellular amastigotes was significantly decreased. These findings revealed the potential efficacy of artemisinin against the infectious amastigotes and can be further studied to screen its effectiveness in vivo for exploring a safer herbal compound to treat cutaneous leishmaniasis.
Inflammation of the tonsils could be described as acute tonsillitis, mainly due to infection. Recurrent tonsillitis could be defined as 3-7 episodes during the first 3 years of age. Vitamin D, which is a neuro-hormone with pleiotropic biological activities may modulate the immune response by alleviation, and stimulation of Th1 and Th2 cell proliferation, respectively, that influence the stimulation, synthesis, and secretion of both pro and anti-inflammatory cytokines. In this study we aimed to shed light on the levels of vitamin D in children with different episodes of tonsillitis in association with levels of interleukins (TNFα, IL-2, IL-4, IL-10). Blood samples were collected from 48 participants in 3 groups: control, acute tonsilliti
... Show MoreVoice Activity Detection (VAD) is considered as an important pre-processing step in speech processing systems such as speech enhancement, speech recognition, gender and age identification. VAD helps in reducing the time required to process speech data and to improve final system accuracy by focusing the work on the voiced part of the speech. An automatic technique for VAD using Fuzzy-Neuro technique (FN-AVAD) is presented in this paper. The aim of this work is to alleviate the problem of choosing the best threshold value in traditional VAD methods and achieves automaticity by combining fuzzy clustering and machine learning techniques. Four features are extracted from each speech segment, which are short term energy, zero-crossing rate, auto
... Show MoreInfluenza is a highly infectious and lethal viral disease, it appears on Earth periodically in connection with the passage of comet in the vicinity of Earth around the Sun .it is believed that particles spread from the tail of the comet due to solar heating energy ,are contaminated with very tiny small particles considered as viruses. Viruses reach the Earth with the power of the solar wind due to solar activity cycle which is driven every 11 year. Viruses pushed towards Earth’s atmosphere, then precipitate on clouds and reach the surface of Earth. These viruses are very well shielded and unaffected by even UV radiation ,but the only way the shell is melt when they passes through the digestive system . Results showed a good correlation
... Show MoreActivity recognition (AR) is a new interesting and challenging research area with many applications (e.g. healthcare, security, and event detection). Basically, activity recognition (e.g. identifying user’s physical activity) is more likely to be considered as a classification problem. In this paper, a combination of 7 classification methods is employed and experimented on accelerometer data collected via smartphones, and compared for best performance. The dataset is collected from 59 individuals who performed 6 different activities (i.e. walk, jog, sit, stand, upstairs, and downstairs). The total number of dataset instances is 5418 with 46 labeled features. The results show that the proposed method of ensemble boost-based classif
... Show MoreThe efficacy of five insect growth regulators has been tested against white fly larva Alearoclava jasimini on citrus tree orchards. Data from field tl'ia ls con finned that percent mortalities were 43.7, 33.9, 23.7, 20.8 and 12.3 for Admiral ( I miL) pyriproxefen, Nomol t 1 5 SC (!milL) Teflubenzuren , Match 050 EC ( I milL ) Lufenuren , cascade I 0 F.C (
0.9mi/L) flufenoxaron, and Dimiline 10 EC ( I milL) Difluben- zuron. The result indicated that Admiral and Nomolt have a continuous effect for one month , so the treatment needs to be repeated for each four weeks. Also, Admiral and Nomolt effect against eggs hatching by 41. 3 % and
This study was conducted to evaluate the activity of pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) peel powder and Pseudomonas fluorescens against Pythium aphanidermatum the causal agent of cucumber seedlings damping-off. Results showed that augmenting of pomegranate peel powder at 2%, P. fluorescens suspension contain 4×107cfu/ml, and the fungicide Previcure N at 0.5 ml/L to culture media (PDA) were inhibited the pathogen growth by 100, 100 and 72.1% respectively. Results of greenhouse experiment indicated that treatment of cucumber seeds with pomegranate peel powder, reduced pre-emergence damping-off percentage to 3.3% compared with 16.6% disease with P. fluorescens and 96.6% in control treatment (pathogen only). No significant differences were ob
... Show MoreThis study was designed to show, the role of Carthamus tinctorius safflower aqueous extract against toxicity of nickel chloride (NiCl2). Twenty male, rabbits were used and divided into four groups (with 5 rabbits in each group); group (control group) received normal diet, group II received orally 100mg/kg NiCl2 for six weeks, group III received 100mg/kg NiCl2 and 100mg/kg extract six weeks, group IV received 100mg/kg NiCl2 and 200mg/ kg extract six weeks. Hematological parameters showed (RBC (Red blood cells), Hb (Hemoglobin), PCV (Packed cells volume) decreased and WBC (White blood cells) increased) significant changes (P < 0.05) compared with control group. Immunological parameters (IgG, IgA and IgM increased) and oxidative s
... Show MoreThe study included selection six species of the fungi related to Pleurotus genus were evaluated for their ability to production of Pleurotin, one of them, Pleurotus ostreatus (P.11) was isolated and identified in the present study. Pleurotin was extracted with screening by Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) and quantification High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). Cytotoxicity of Pleurotin extracted from P. ostreatus (P.11) grown in different sugar sources (galactose, mannitol, sucrose, dextrose and lactose) liquid media was test against three selected cancer cell lines, CaSki, MCF-7 and A549 addition to Human Non Cancer Fibroblast Cell Line (MRC-5). Pleurotin of P. ostreatus (P.11) grown in galactose induced the significant highest
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