Background: Osteoarthritis is a chronic pathology of the joints causing disability and morbidity. Diacerein is a disease-modifying agent indicated for osteoarthritis management with enhanced performance and have much lower side effects profile than conventional non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Oral administration of Diacerein is associated with a laxative effect, thus causing treatment discontinuation. Aim: This study aimed to evaluate the activity of Diacerein novasome-based transdermal gel compared with standard oral treatment in the management of induced osteoarthritis in a rat model. Materials and methods: A single intra-articular injection of monosodium iodoacetate was administered to the left knee joint, resulting in the development of Osteoarthritis. Disease progression and the effect of both routes of Diacerein treatment were evaluated by morphological, biochemical, histological, and radiological studies. Results: Osteoarthritis was successfully induced in rats’ knee joints. Morphological studies revealed that both the Diacerein treatments significantly reduced joint swelling as compared to the untreated group. The serum TNF-α and IL-1β levels were significantly lower in both Diacerein treatment groups as compared to the untreated group throughout the course of the study. Histological and radiological findings confirmed that transdermal Diacerein treatment protects against cartilage degradation like oral treatment. Conclusion: Novasomal technology proved its efficacy as a carrier for the transdermal delivery of Diacerein. The in-vivo study on an animal model of osteoarthritis showed that Diacerein transdermal gels provided sufficient pharmacological activity for the attenuation of the disease. This finding could support its use as an alternative to the standard oral treatment to avoid side effects.
Background: Measuring implant stability is an important issue in predicting treatment success. Dental implant stability is usually measured through resonance frequency analysis (RFA). Osstell® RFA devices can be used with transducers (Smartpeg™) that correspond to the implants used as well as with transducers designed for application with Penguin® RFA devices (Multipeg™). Aims: This study aims to assess the reliability of a MultiPeg™ transducer with an Osstell® device in measuring dental implant stability. Materials and Methods: Sixteen healthy participants who required dental implant treatment were enrolled in this study. Implant stability was measured by using an Osstell® device with two transducers, namely, Smartpeg™ and M
... Show MoreBackground: Acute urinary tract infection is a common bacterial infection causing illness in infants and children. At age of seven, 8% of girls and 2% of boys will have at least one episode. Although drinking water and using home remedies are known to help to flush away bacteria and keeps them from sticking to the bladder wall, researches to test the efficacy and safety of hydrochlorothiazide's diuretic effect as adjuvant to the antibiotics in pediatric age groups are lacking, and so this research was to address this subject.
Objectives: To assess the effectiveness and the safety of hydrochlorothiazide as adjuvant therapy to the antibiotics in treating acute urinary tract infect
... Show MoreMolecular dynamics (MD) simulations were carried out in order to investigate the binding mode of axillaridine-A at the active site of human acetylcholinesterase (AChE) enzyme. 2.0 nanosecond of MD simulations was made for the protein and the complex to dynamically explore the active site and the behavior of the ligand at the peripheral AChE binding site. These calculations for the enzyme alone showed that the active site of AChE is located at the bottom of a deep and narrow cavity whose surface is lined with rings of aromatic residues and Tyr72 is almost perpendicular to the Trp286 ring and forms a stable - interaction. The size of the active site of the complex decreases with time due to increase the interaction. Axillaridine-A forms
... Show MoreThe field of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is the process of converting an image of text into a machine-readable text format. The classification of Arabic manuscripts in general is part of this field. In recent years, the processing of Arabian image databases by deep learning architectures has experienced a remarkable development. However, this remains insufficient to satisfy the enormous wealth of Arabic manuscripts. In this research, a deep learning architecture is used to address the issue of classifying Arabic letters written by hand. The method based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture as a self-extractor and classifier. Considering the nature of the dataset images (binary images), the contours of the alphabet
... Show MorePurpose: As a result of the sudden and ill-considered trade openness of Iraq after 2003 to the countries of the world in general and the neighboring countries in particular, and in the absence of the necessary support for the national productive forces and the lack of effective standardization and quality control devices, this led to the exposure of most local products, especially agricultural ones, to decline and inability On the competition and thus dumping the Iraqi market, especially the agricultural products, with imported products, this study came to find out the effect that dumping has on the local production of chicken meat and the impact of that impact on the size of the food gap, and whether the results of the practica
... Show MoreThe blade pitch angle (BPA) controller is key factor to improve the power generation of wind turbine (WT). Due to the aerodynamic structural behavior of the rotor blades, wind turbine system performance is influenced by pitch angle and environmental conditions such as wind speed, which fluctuate throughout the day. Therefore, to overcome the pitch angle control (PAC) problem, high wind speed conditions, and due to type-1 and type-2 fuzzy logic limitations for handling high levels of uncertainty, the newly proposed optimal hybrid type-3 fuzzy logic controller has been applied and compared since type-3 fuzzy controllers utilize three-dimensional membership functions, unlike type-2 and type-1 fuzzy logic controllers. In this paper six differen
... Show MoreBackground: Recurrent Aphthous Stomatitis (RAS) is the most common painful oral mucosal disease, affecting approximately 20% of the population. RAS presents with a wide spectrum of severity ranging from a minor nuisance to complete debility. Many of factors thought to have been involved in its etiology; that might have at the same time a direct or indirect impact upon oxidant/antioxidant system and trigger free radicals production. The aim of this study was to determine the possible association of oxidant/total antioxidant status and recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS). Subjects, materials and methods: The study consisted of thirty patients with recurrent aphthous stomatitis and thirty healthy controls from which saliva and blood samples we
... Show MoreBackground: Toxoplasmosis is a very common infection caused by the obligate intracellular protozoan parasite. This parasite is called Toxoplasma gondii widely distributed around the world . Toxoplasma gondii can be vertically transmitted to the fetus during pregnancy and may cause wide range of clinical manifestations in the offspring.
Objective: To determine seroprevalence Immunoglobulin G (IgG) and Immunoglobulin M (IgM ) to toxoplasma gondii among pregnant women and to identify the risk factors.
Type of the study: A cross-sectional study.
Methods: A total of 110 blood samples of pregnant women were collected from
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