Background: Rituximab is a chimeric IgG1 kappa immunoglobulin that has been genetically modified to incorporate human constant region sequences together with murine light- and heavy-chain variable region sequences. People use it to treat rheumatoid arthritis and certain malignancies. Objective: The study aimed to assess the potential association between the serum levels of Factor I, CD59, interleukins (IL)-6, and interferon-gamma (IFN)-γ and the response to Rituximab treatment in Iraqi rheumatoid arthritis patients. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at the rheumatology center at Baghdad Teaching Hospital. Ninety adult patients who have been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and are receiving Rituximab intravenous infusions were included. The enrolled patients were divided into a responder group (45 patients) and a non-responder group (45 patients). The response to Rituximab was assessed according to the 28-joint Disease Activity Score (DAS28). Results: The serum levels of Factor I and CD59 were significantly higher in the non-responders group in comparison to the responders group. In addition, the serum IL-6 and IFN-γ levels were significantly elevated in the non-responders group in comparison to the responders group. The estimated marker serum levels showed a strong, significant correlation with the 6-month change in DAS28. Conclusions: In Rituximab nonresponder RA patients, serum levels of Factor I, CD59, Factor H, IL-6, and IFN-γ are higher, and they have good potential to be used in the assessment of the response to Rituximab therapy.
Objective: To study the effect of epidural spinal injection over one year in case of spinal stenosis. Methodology: This prospective study included 566 patients with spinal stenosis seen at Al-Kindy Teaching and Al-Sader, Hospitals who were treated by local epidural steroid injection. They were followed up for at least five subsequent visits after seven days, one month, three months, six months, and one year to assess efficacy. Result: Mean age of patients was 49.5 years, with a predominance of females (65%). L4/L5 was the most involved level in the spinal stenosis (70%). Grade II stenosis accounted for (45.4%) of cases. The pairwise comparison revealed that there was significant decrease in proportions of patients with pain in day
... Show MoreThe university course timetable problem (UCTP) is typically a combinatorial optimization problem. Manually achieving a useful timetable requires many days of effort, and the results are still unsatisfactory. unsatisfactory. Various states of art methods (heuristic, meta-heuristic) are used to satisfactorily solve UCTP. However, these approaches typically represent the instance-specific solutions. The hyper-heuristic framework adequately addresses this complex problem. This research proposed Particle Swarm Optimizer-based Hyper Heuristic (HH PSO) to solve UCTP efficiently. PSO is used as a higher-level method that selects low-level heuristics (LLH) sequence which further generates an optimal solution. The proposed a
... Show MoreThis study is conducted to determine the effect of pathogenicity of the fungus Lecanicillium lecanii in some aspects of life of the insect saw toothed beetle Oryzaephilus surinamensis L. (Coleoptera: Silvanidae) under laboratory conditions with three concentrations of spores and mildew commentator (1 × 103, 1 × 105, 1 × 107) spore / ml , on eggs and larvae second phase of the insect .The study also includs the effect of the fungus concentrations of germination on rice (jasmine) by using direct spray treatment. The results show great fungus efficiency in the control of some aspects of life of the insect, where varied efficiency depends on the concentration of spores, The highest percentage loss of eggs is 63.33% at a concentration
... Show MoreIn the present work, the behavior of thick-walled cylinder of elasto-plastic material (polymeric material) has been studied analytically. The study is based on modified Von-Mises yield criterion (for non metallic material). The equations of stress distribution are obtained for the cylinder under general cases of elastic expansion, plastic initiation and elastic-plastic expansion.
A computer program is developed for evaluating the stress distribution. The solution is carried out for worst boundary conditions when the cylinder is subjected to the combination of pressure load, inertia load, and temperature gradient.
The results are presente
... Show MoreDue to increased consumption of resources, especially energy it was necessary to find alternatives characterized by the same quality as well as being of less expensive, and most important of these alternatives are characterized by waste and the fact that humancannot stop consumption. So we have consideredwaste as an alternative and cheap economic resources and by using environmental index the MIP (input materials per unit ,unit / service) is based on the grounds that the product is not the end of itselfit is a product to meet the need of a product or service, awarded a resource input and output within the five basic elements are the raw materials is ecological, Raw materials ecological, water, air and soil erosion for a
... Show MoreTo show the impact of 790-805 nm diode laser irradiations on wound healing as a supplementary treatment in women underwent episiotomies, and to assess the laser parameters that were used .Material and methods: Eighteen female patients were included in this study; all of them underwent mediolateral episiotomy. Ten patients received laser therapy- diode laser (K Laser) (790-805) nm in CW mode of operation (and eight patients were the control group. Spot size of 8mm, time for exposure for each spot was 30 seconds. The power used was 0.6 W .The power density for each spot of treatment was 1.19 W/cm2 per session (non contact mode of application of laser therapy).The group studied received 2 sessions of laser radiation, day 4, and day 8 after
... Show MoreThe species of Opilio kakunini Snegovaya, Cokendolpher & Mozaffarian, 2018 was recorded for the first time in Iraq; as well as to four species belonging to this order which were recorded previously. In this paper, we added a new species to the checklist of Iraqi opilionid fauna with a description of the most important characteristics, along with genitalia, for both males and females are presented with digital photographs. Specimens of males and females were collected from Al- Rifai district northern of Dhi-Qar Province, southern of Iraq.