Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive airflow limitation that is preventable but not curable. It is associated with persistent symptoms that cause a considerable burden on individual productivity at work, and daily activities, and reduced quality of life, also burdening the healthcare system and society. Objectives: The study aims to measure the burden of COPD on patients in terms of daily activities and work productivity. It also seeks to investigate some inflammatory biomarkers' levels and their correlation with selected outcomes. Patients and Methods: A cross-sectional study on 120 stable COPD patients who were diagnosed and treated according to the GOLD guidelines at Kirkuk General Hospital's

Background:

  Recent progress in the understanding of psoriasis has shown that the regulation of local and systemic cytokines plays an important role in its pathogenesis. Different studies evaluated the association of serum levels of some proinflammatory cytokines invivo and their correlation with severity of psoriasis. Eighty cases of psoriatic patients had been studied. Patients were divided into mild psoriasis group (30) and severe psoriasis group (50) according to severity, and (30) apparently healthy individuals ware used as acontrol group. Sera samples of all groups were collected from all individuals for the estimation levels of interleukins (IL-6 and IL-8).  All mean values sera levels (IL-6 32.004 pg/ml and 17.579 pg/ml  for

The aim of this study was to investigate the disturbances of some liver enzymes like GPT and GOT level in different groups of women infected with toxoplasmosis. This study was performed on 600 apparently healthy women (pregnant, miscarriage and single) collected from different hospitals in Baghdad, AL-Yarmouk Teaching Hospital and Fatima AL-Zahra Hospital for Obstetric and children and Hay Hiteen clinic during November 2013 till April 2014. The detection of toxoplasmosis was done by a preliminary screening test LAT and the positive percentage was (29.55%), (30.36%) and (40.08%) for pregnant, miscarriage and single women respectively. While, the confirmation of positive results of LAT was done by ELISA-IgG and the results were (40%), (41.

Background: Osteoporosis is a bone condition that makes bones thininer and more fragile because of reduced bone density and it puts people at risk of fractures, especially of the hip, spinal vertebrae and wrist.
Objective: This study will highlighted the role of IL-17 in postmenopausal osteoporosis.
Patients and methods: This study applied on 84 includes subjects (42 postmenopausal osteoporosis patient and 42 of healthy control group), conducted from December 2014 to March 2015 to measure the IL-17 serum level by using ELISA kit.
Results: In osteoporotic postmenopausal women the mean of serum IL-17 was (0.49pg/ml) and it is significantly higher than that of healthy group (0.09pg/ml).
Conclusion: Serum IL-17 was significantly

Background: Total serum sialic acid (TSA) and lipid associated sialic acid (LSA) have not been measured yet in depressive disorders.
Aim :The present study was undertaken to show if there is any change in the concentration of different forms of sialic acids in patients with depressive disorder.
Methods: TSA and LSA levels have been estimated in serum of 72 patients with depression, in addition to 50 healthy controls .
Results reflect a significant increase (p<0.05) in the TSA and BSA in the depressed patients as compared with healthy controls.
Conclusions: It could be concluded that TSA and BSA could reflect an immune like response to depression associated with increase in the sialylation of differ

Recent reports provided evidence that epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) and some matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) contribute to the invasion and metastasis of cancer cells. This study investigated the expression pattern of some EMT markers (E-cadherin and Vimentin) and some MMPs (MMP-2 and MMP-9) in transitional cell carcinoma (TCC). Fifty five paraffin embedded biopsies were included in this study. Expression pattern of E-cadherin and Vimentin was evaluated by immunohistochemistry while cytoplasmic mRNA expression of both MMP-2 and MMP-9 were determined by in situ hybridization. The expression of all markers were significantly increased with the increase of patient's age (? 50 years), and furthermore an increase in men expression

Urine samples had been gathered from females living in Baghdad city. The sample consisted of 30 females who suffered from U.T.I (Urinary tract infections) and 20 healthy females. The type of urine U.T.I was specified by the emergency lab in Al-Kindy hospital, and alpha tracks were determined by the nuclear track detector CR-39. The concentrations of alpha in 30 urine samples taken from females who had U.T.I ranged from 0.327ppm-1.583ppm, with an average of 0.94965 ppm. The maximum value 1.583 ppm is belonging to females with an aged 57 years old. The results of healthy female concentration ranged from 0.022 ppm-0.459ppm with an average of (0.30855ppm). The findings revealed that alpha emitter concentrations differed from woman to woman,

Background: Transitional cell carcinomas (TCC) of the bladder are a major health problem. Recently, some studies link high risk Human papilloma viruses' type 16 and type 18 with bladder carcinoma.
Materials and methods: Fifty formalin fixed, paraffin embedded tissues with TCC of the bladder from Specialized Surgical Hospital in Baghdad were included in this study. In addition, ten
apparently normal bladder autopsies were collected from the Forensic Medicine Institute Archives and used as control group. Tissue blocks were sectioned and sticked on charged slides and used for the detection of HPV-16 and HPV-18.
Results: The expression of HPV-16 and HPV-18 DNA signals in TCC of the bladder tissues in the&nbs