Background: The microbial production of substances that have the potency to suppress the growth of other microorganisms is probably one of the prevalent defense strategy developed in nature, microorganisms produce a variable bunch of microbial defense systems, which include antibiotics, metabolic by-products, lytic agents, bacteriocins and others. Objective: The purpose of the present study was to isolate and identify Enterococcus faecium isolates then detecting its ability of carrying the gene responsible for enterocin production in this species. Materials and methods: Out of 50 samples from different sources (food and clinical sources) were collected for the Enterococcus faecium isolation, and the isolated bacteria Enterococ

Psoriasis is a dermatological, chronic, immune-mediated condition. Psoriasis symptoms are not associated with physical burden only, but it may also have psychosocial effects on patients, diminished cognitive control, poor body image and impairments in everyday life. The value of quality of life is important since improving it is the principal goal for non-curative disease. The aim of the current study was to evaluate quality of life in a sample of Iraqi patients with psoriasis. This study is a cross-sectional study that involved 300 already diagnosed psoriasis patients who attended to the center of Dermatology and Venereology, Medical City/Baghdad. The mean age of patients was (35.156 ±10.549 years). The Arabic version of Dermatology Li

Background: Despite the importance of vaccines in preventing COVID-19, the willingness to receive COVID-19 vaccines is lower among RA patients than in the general population. Objective: To determine the extent of COVID-19 knowledge among RA patients and their attitudes and perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines. Methods: A qualitative study with a phenomenology approach was performed through face-to-face, individual-based, semi-structured interviews in the Baghdad Teaching Hospital, Baghdad, Iraq, rheumatology unit. A convenient sample of RA patients using disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs was included until the point of saturation. A thematic content analysis approach was used to analyze the obtained data. Results: Twenty-five RA pa

The present study included the effect of chronic exposure for two concentrations of NaC? salt on the biology of fresh water zooplankton species Brachionus calyciflorus (from ^otifera). The concentrations 0.5 , 0.75%o were used for chronic exposure to investigate its effects on the life tables, range of the rate of expectation for further life and reproduction. The rotifer B. calyciflorus was sensitive to salinity and may tried to protect the species by increasing the size (2.22 ind./clutch lor control group and 2.9? for 0.5%o concentration) and number of clutches produced ?.1? clutch/female for control group and 2.9 ' ' ' for 0.75 %0 concentration) beside stimulation the animal to produce the first clutch of eggs earlier? ? small reduction

Heart sound is an electric signal affected by some factors during the signal's recording process, which adds unwanted information to the signal. Recently, many studies have been interested in noise removal and signal recovery problems. The first step in signal processing is noise removal; many filters are used and proposed for treating this problem. Here, the Hankel matrix is implemented from a given signal and tries to clean the signal by overcoming unwanted information from the Hankel matrix. The first step is detecting unwanted information by defining a binary operator. This operator is defined under some threshold. The unwanted information replaces by zero, and the wanted information keeping in the estimated matrix. The resulting matrix

4 Blood Res 2018;53:314-319. Received on August 11, 2018 Revised on August 30, 2018 Accepted on August 30, 2018 Background Iron overload is a risk factor affecting all patients with thalassemia intermedia (TI). We aimed to determine whether there is a relationship of serum ferritin (SF) and alanine ami- notransferase (ALT) with liver iron concentration (LIC) determined by R2 magnetic reso- nance imaging (R2-MRI), to estimate the most relevant degree of iron overload and best time to chelate in patients with TI. Methods In this cross-sectional study, 119 patients with TI (mean age years) were randomly se- lected and compared with 120 patients who had a diagnosis of thalassemia major (TM). Correlations of LIC, as determined by R2-MRI, with SF

Background: Ankylosing spondylitis is a chronic inflammatory disease that mostly involves the spine and sacroiliac joints. It is associated with a decreased quality of life. Biological medicines such as infliximab and its biosimilar are the mainstay treatments for active ankylosing spondylitis.

Objective: The study objective was to conduct a pharmacoeconomic study comparing the cost-effectiveness of the reference infliximab with its biosimilar in ankylosing spondylitis patients visiting public hospitals.

Subjects and Method: This is a two-center pharmacoeconomic study performed at two large teaching governmental hospitals in Baghdad, Iraq, which s

Systemic lupus Erythematosus is an autoimmune disease of unknown aetiology affecting multiple organ system. Reactive nitrogen and oxygen species are claimed to play a role in this disease. However, the potential of Nitrosative/Oxidative Stress to elicit an autoimmune, response remain till now largely unexplored in humans. This study was done to investigate the status and contribution of nitrosative/oxidative stress in Iraqi patients for systemic lupus erythematosus. Blood samples from 19 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and 19 age-and sex- matched apparently healthy controls were evaluated for serum levels of nitrosative/oxidative stress markers including nitric oxide, peroxynitrite and malondialdehyde. Nitric oxide levels were

Abstract

A series of new 4(3H)-quinazolinone derivatives (S1-S4) were synthesized and characterized   by FTIR,¹HNMR and ¹³CNMR .Their cytotoxic activity against a set of human cancer cell lines MCF-7 (breast) and A549 (lung) was evaluated using MTT assay. To detect their selectivity toward cancer cells, the compounds were also tested against epithelial cells derived from normal human fibroblast (NHF). Methotrexate (MTX) was used as a reference for comparison . All the tested compounds exhibited toxicity against the normal cells lower than cancer cells. All the tested compounds displayed higher cytotoxicity against lung cancer cell line (A549) than MTX with the most