Background: Mycoplasma pneumoniae (M. pneumoniae) is an important respiratory bacterial pathogen, especially among children. It causes acute upper and lower respiratory infections.Objective: This study was aimed to measure anti- M. pneumoniae antibodies among hospitalized children who were admitted to hospital diagnosed with acute respiratory tract infections.Method: Automated ELISA technique was performed to detect anti- M. pneumoniae antibodies (IgM and IgG antibodies) in serum from 108 children less than 5 years old. The children were admitted to the Pediatric Teaching Hospital in Suleimani city/Kurdistan Region/Iraq because of acute respiratory tract infections. A questionnaire was designed to collect demographic and clinical data fr

BACKGROUND: Febrile neutropenia occurs in more than 80% of patients with hematological malignances specially after chemotherapy cycles and an infectious source is identified in approximately 20–30%. Various bacterial, viral, and fungal pathogen contribute to the development of neutropenic fever and without prompt antibiotic therapy mortality rate can be as high as 70%. AIM: The objective of the study was to document the current sites of infection in patients with febrile neutropenia in hematological ward in Baghdad Teaching Hospital, the microorganisms and antibiotic susceptibly in culture positive cases and mortality rate in 1 week and 4 weeks after episode of fever. PATIENTS AND METHODS: One hundred cases of febrile neutrop

This paper is devoted to investigate experimentally and theoretically the structural behavior of reinforced concrete hollow beams which have internal transverse ribs under effect of shear. The number of the internal ribs is the major variable adopted in this research, while, the other variables are kept constant for all tested specimens. The experimental part includes poured and test of four (200x300x1200mm) beam specimens, three of these specimens were hollow with different locations of internal ribs and one of them was solid. The experimental results indicated that the shear strength are increased (33%) to (60%) for beams containing internal ribs in comparison with reference beam. Also, the change of beam state from ho

This work was evaluated the antioxidant, antibacterial and cytotoxic activity of Costus speciosus rhizomes methanol extract. The FLC analysis showed the presence of five compounds in the methanol extract of C. speciosus rhizomes. These compounds were Quercetin (5.2mg/ml), Rutin (6.02mg/ml), Luteolin, (18.3mg/ml),
Kaempherol, (11.34mg/ml) and Coumarin (1.41mg/ml). The maximum antioxidant activity of the extract was at concentration 1000 μg/ml with free radical scavenging activity approximately 67.5%. It was less than standard ascorbic acid 85.5% and Gallic acid 90% with significant difference (p≤0.05), with no significant difference
in comparison with standard TBA 68.5%. The IC50 of extract was 3093

Use of Surveillance cameras in houses and markets became common, that resulted to minimize theft and make it a difficult task because it let recording and viewing what is going around. The wide application of these cameras, pushed thieves to seek new ways for abolition of the surveillance system and digital recording of events, such as cutting the signal wire between the camera and Digital video recorder or changing the direction of the camera away from the focus spot or damaging the camera or steal the device which means the loss of the recorded media. This paper focuses on such abolitions and fixed it by suggesting a way to notify the administrator immediately and automatically by Email about any violation of the system using MATLAB, whic

Antibiotic resistance increment is a major problem for the human society nowadays which encourages the efforts to look for new therapeutic alternatives from natural defenses. Synergistic antibacterial activity of epidermin and staphylolysin LasA A against Staphylococcus aureus (Staph aureus), Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Ps. aeruginosa) was evaluated. The antibacterial activities of epidermin from Staphylococcus epidermidis (Staph epidermidis) and Staphylolysin (LasA) from Ps. aeruginosa using the agar well diffusion assay were evaluated, and then using the micro dilution method to evaluate the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and the minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC). The checkerboard method and fract

Sludge from stone-cutting (SSC) factories and stone mines cannot be used as decorative stones, stone powder, etc. These substances are left in the environment and cause environmental problems. This study aim is to produce artificial stone composite (ASC) using sludge from stone cutting factories, cement, unsaturated resin, water, silicon carbide nanoparticles (SiC-NPs), and nano-graphene oxide (NGO) as fillers. Nano graphene oxide has a hydrophobic plate structure that water is not absorbed due to the lack of surface tension on these plates. NGO has a significant effect on the properties of artificial stone due to its high specific surface area and low density in the composite. Its uniform distribution in ASC is very low due to its hydropho

The phagocytic activity of peritoneal and blood cells counts with neutrophils and monocytes were evaluated in albino mice treated wtth two antigen preparations (A and B) from group A streptococci (GAS). Antigen A included water bathed bacteria at 70 °C for 60 minutes, while in Antigen B the bacteria was autoclaved at 121° C for 15 minutes. The animals were treated with 12 intraperitoneal doses of the antigens with intervals of three days (36 days). The 12th dose was a challenge dose (live bacteria). The first three doses of Antigen A increased the phagocytic index (PI) to a range of 76.46-78.69%, then a gradual decreased percentage was observed, especially at the challenge dose (PI=6.42%). The count of neutrophils and monocytes fol

The therapeutic value of the phenolic component and pure thymol was well known; this study comprised the extraction of crude phenol from two plants (Thymus vulgaris and Artemisia annua) which contain thymol with pure thymol and evaluate their effect on hematological and histological by using three different concentrations of each plant extract and pure thymol to tested them on lab mice. All the mice were allowed free access to water and feed for 21 days in laboratory conditions; orally, pure water was administered to the control mice (group I), while groups II, III, and IV were given orally with T. vulgaris, A. annua, combination of last two crude phenol plant extract 50:50 and pure thymol respectively. The levels of CHO, TRI, and HDL were

Background: Cisplatin is one of the most
commonly used anti-cancer drugs , but its
clinical use was limited by its nephrotoxicity .
Methods: In this study we try to investigate the
renoprotective effect of captopril and
aminophylline against cisplatin induced
nephrotoxicity .For this purpose a 36 Sprague
Dawley rats was divided randomly to 6 groups ,
each group consist of 6 rats. The first group
given normal saline and act as control group,
while the other 5 groups given cisplatin ( 7.5
mg/kg ) , captopril ( 60 mg/kg ) , aminophylline
( 24 mg/kg ) , captopril with cisplatin and
aminophylline with cisplatin respectively. All
drugs are given as single dose through
intraperitonial route. After 6