BACKGROUND: Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) is a proangiogenic factor that exerts different effects over stem cell survival growth, apoptosis, and adhesion. Its impact on leukemogenesis has been established by many studies. AIM: This study aimed to determine the effect of plasma HGF activity on acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients at presentation and after remission. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This was a cross-sectional prospective study of 30 newly-diagnosed, adult, and AML patients. All patients received the 7+3 treatment protocol. Patients’ clinical data were taken at presentation, and patients were followed up for 6 months to evaluate the clinical status. Plasma HGF levels were estimated by ELISA based methods in the patients at two intervals first at diagnosis and the 2nd time after remission of disease. Plasma HGF levels were only measured once in twenty healthy control individuals. RESULTS: A statistically significant lowering in the median levels of HGF after remission induction therapy has been found when compared with those before treatment (p = 0.006) and in the group of patients who achieved complete remission in comparison with those before treatment (p = 0.005). Furthermore, a significant reduction was also demonstrated after treatment in patients presenting with extramedullary involvement (p = 0.003) and in the alive group (p = 0.001). CONCLUSION: Plasma HGF estimation can be a useful parameter in predicting treatment outcomes in patients with AML, and it can add potentially useful information to risk stratification parameters.
This paper presents an improved technique on Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm. The procedure is applied on Single Machine with Infinite Bus (SMIB) system with power system stabilizer (PSS) at three different loading regimes. The simulations are made by using MATLAB software. The results show that by using Improved Ant Colony Optimization (IACO) the system will give better performance with less number of iterations as it compared with a previous modification on ACO. In addition, the probability of selecting the arc depends on the best ant performance and the evaporation rate.
A spectrophotometric determination of azithromycin was optimized using the simplex model. The approach has been proven to be accurate and sensitive. The analyte has been reacted with bromothymol blue (BTB) to form a colored ion pair which has been extracted in chloroform in a buffer medium of pH=4 of potassium phthalate. The extracted colored product was assayed at 415 nm and exhibited a linear quantification range over (1 - 20) g/ml. The excipients did not exhibit any interferences with the proposed approach for assaying azithromycin in pharmaceutical formulations.
This paper is concerned with Double Stage Shrinkage Bayesian (DSSB) Estimator for lowering the mean squared error of classical estimator ˆ q for the scale parameter (q) of an exponential distribution in a region (R) around available prior knowledge (q0) about the actual value (q) as initial estimate as well as to reduce the cost of experimentations. In situation where the experimentations are time consuming or very costly, a Double Stage procedure can be used to reduce the expected sample size needed to obtain the estimator. This estimator is shown to have smaller mean squared error for certain choice of the shrinkage weight factor y( ) and for acceptance region R. Expression for
... Show MoreThe following dilution 5×10-1, 10-1, 10?2 , 10-3 gm/L for the indigenous isolate of Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria and the commercially isalate were used for experiments against the different stages of fig moth of E.cautella which exposed by filter paper method. The results showed that mortality of larval stages was increased with the increasing concentration of the biocide, in addition to increase in the mortality of the larval stages reached to the highest percentage in the third days of treatment of the larval stage in comparison with the first and second days of exposure. The results also showed that the sensitivity of larval stages was increased in first and second instars while reduced in the last instars .The high percentage
... Show MoreThis paper presents the effect of relativistic and ponderomotive nonlinearity on cross-focusing of two intense laser beams in a collisionless and unmagnetized plasma. It should be noted here that while considering the self-focusing due to relativistic electron mass variation, the electron ponderomotive density depression in the channel may also be important. Therefore/these two nonlinearties may simultaneously affect the self-focusing process. These nonlinearities depend not only on the intensity of one laser but also on the second laser. Therefore, one laser beam affects the dynamics of the second beam and hence the process of cross-focusing takes place. The electric field amplitude of the excited electron plasma wave (EPW) has been cal
... Show MoreThe effect of α-particle irradiation on the optical absorption in nuclear track detectors (LR115) has been studied. These detectors have been irradiated with different doses. The optical absorption has been measured using the ultraviolet-visible (UV-1100) spectroscopy, that irradiation results in shifting the peaks of the optical absorption. The values of Urbach energy have been calculated from the position of steady-state optical band gap energy, for a standard sample which was unirradiated with indirect influence, has been found 1.9 eV whereas its value after irradiation 1.98 eV. In case of the direct influence, it is found to be, respectively, before irradiation 1.98 eV and after irradiation 2.05 eV. From these results, we can
... Show More