Cutaneous leishmaniasis is a disease caused by Leishmania tropica parasite. Current treatments for this parasite are undesirable because of their toxicity, resistance, and high cost. Macrophages are key players against pathogens. Nitric oxide (NO), a molecule produce by immune cells, controls intracellular killing of pathogens during infection. Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) demonstrated broad-spectrum activity against various types of infectious diseases. It has the ability to stimulate oxygen species production. This study aims to analyze the macrophages activation through NO production and estimate the cytotoxicity based on the lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release upon exposure to L. tropica and Ag NPs. Serially concentrations of Ag NPs were used under two conditions during and following macrophages exposure to L. tropica. MTT assay was used to determine the cytotoxicity of Ag NPs on L. tropica amastigotes during infection of macrophages in vitro. The results showed that by increasing the Ag NPs concentrations, the viability percentage of L. tropica amastigotes decreased and reached to 21.7 ± 0.64 % during infection compared with the control. The 50% inhibitory concentration of Ag NPs on amastigotes was 2.048µg/ml during infection. Moreover, post-phagocytosis study involved the assessment of NO and LDH release by macrophages upon exposure to L. tropica. It have shown that untreated macrophages released low levels of NO while in the presence of Ag NPs, macrophages were activated to produce higher levels of NO under all experimental conditions. On the other hand, macrophages were capable of controlling cytotoxicity and decreasing LDH levels during phagocytosis of L. tropica amastiogotes. Taking together, these findings suggest that Ag NPs can enhance macrophages NO production which provides a method for the identification of Ag NPs ligands with microbicidal and anti-cytotoxic properties against L. tropica pathogens.
Objective: The present study investigates whether the exposure to low-power diode laser induces denaturation in red blood cell (RBC) membrane protein composition, and determines the irradiation time for when denaturation of membrane protein process begins. Background: A low-energy laser has been used extensively in medical applications. Several studies indicated significant positive effects of laser therapy on biological systems. In contrast, other studies reported that laser induced unwanted changes in cell structure and biological systems. The present work studied the effect of irradiation time of low-power diode laser on the structure of membrane proteins of human RBCs. Materials and methods: The RBC suspension was divided into five equa
... Show MoreThe CuInSe2 (CIS) nanocrystals are synthesized by arrested precipitation from molecular precursors are added to a hot solvent with organic cap- ping ligands to control nanocrystal formation and growth. CIS thin films deposited onto glass substrate by spray - coating, then selenized in Ar- atmosphere to form CIS thin films. PVs were made with power conversion efficiencies of 0.631% as -deposited and 0.846% after selenization, for Mo coated, under AM 1.5 illumination. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) analysis it is evident that CIS have the chalcopyrite structure as the major phase with a preferred orientation along (112) direction and the atomic ratio of Cu : In : Se in the nanocrystals is nearly 1 : 1 : 2
Background: The diagnosis of prostatic pathology may be of challenging , as some difficult and suspected, atypical cases may lack basal cell layer by routine H&E sections . Antibodies against 34BE12(HMW-CK) and p63 aid the diagnosis of such cases , to distinguish benign from malignant prostatic lesions.
Objective: to identify basal cells in atypical prostatic lesions ,and distinguish benign from malignant prostatic lesions.
Type of the study: A retro-spective study.
Methods: 115cases of paraffin embedded prostatic tissue blocks ,diagnosed as : 76 cases were benign prostatic hy
... Show MorePeriodontitis is one of the most prevalent bacterial diseases affecting man with up to 90% of the global population affected. Its severe form can lead to the tooth loss in 10-15% of the population worldwide. The disease is caused by a dysbiosis of the local microbiota and one organism that contributes to this alteration in the bacterial population is Prophyromonas gingivalis. This organism possesses a range of virulence factors that appear to contribute to its growth and survival at a periodontal site amongst which is its ability to invade oral epithelial cells. Such an invasion strategy provides a means of evasion of host defence mechanisms, persistence at a site and the opportunity for dissemination to other sites in the mouth. However, p
... Show MoreCarnosol, a phenolic diterpene, is one of the effective anticancer agents naturally occurring in rosemary, sage, parsley, and oregano. The chemoresistance problem increased with the routinely used chemotherapy. Therefore, the efforts to find a substitute with safe and low cost have become crucial worldwide. The current study attempts to inspect the anticancer molecular mechanisms of Carnosol on modulating up- and down- regulation of multiple genetic carcinogenesis pathways. The cytotoxicity of Carnosol on Hela cells was evaluated by MTS assay. Flow cytometry was used to assess apoptosis and cell cycle arrest. The apoptotic morphological changes were obvious by dual apoptosis assay. The differential gene expression after treatment wi
... Show MoreBiotreatment using immobilized cells (IC) technology has proved to be the most promising and most economical approach for the removal of many toxic organic pollutants found in petroleum-refinery wastewater (PRW) such as phenol. This study was undertaken to evaluate the degradation of phenol by Pseudomonas cells individually immobilized in two different bio-carrier matrices including polyvinyl alcohol-guar gum (PVA-GG) and polyvinyl alcohol-agar agar (PVA-AA). Results of batch experiments revealed that complete removal of phenol was attained in the first cycle after 150 min using immobilized cells (IC) in both PVA-GG and PVA-AA. Additional cycles were confirmed to evaluate the validity of recycling beads of immob
... Show MoreThis study examines experimentally the performance of a horizontal triple concentric tube heat exchanger TCTHE made of copper metal using water as cooling fluid and oil-40 as hot fluid. Hot fluid enters the inner annular tube of the TCTHE in a direction at a temperature of 50, 60 and 70 oC and a flow rate of 20 l/hr. On the other hand, the cooling fluid enters the inner tube and the outer annular tube in the reverse direction (counter current flow) at a temperature of 25 oC and flow rates of 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 l/hr. The TCTHE is composed of three copper tubes with outer diameters of 34.925 mm, 22.25 mm, and 9.525 mm, and thicknesses of 1.27 mm, 1.143 mm, and 0.762 mm, respectively. TCTHE tube's length was 670
... Show MoreThis study focused on spectral clustering (SC) and three-constraint affinity matrix spectral clustering (3CAM-SC) to determine the number of clusters and the membership of the clusters of the COST 2100 channel model (C2CM) multipath dataset simultaneously. Various multipath clustering approaches solve only the number of clusters without taking into consideration the membership of clusters. The problem of giving only the number of clusters is that there is no assurance that the membership of the multipath clusters is accurate even though the number of clusters is correct. SC and 3CAM-SC aimed to solve this problem by determining the membership of the clusters. The cluster and the cluster count were then computed through the cluster-wise J
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Much attention has been paid for the use of robot arm in various applications. Therefore, the optimal path finding has a significant role to upgrade and guide the arm movement. The essential function of path planning is to create a path that satisfies the aims of motion including, averting obstacles collision, reducing time interval, decreasing the path traveling cost and satisfying the kinematics constraints. In this paper, the free Cartesian space map of 2-DOF arm is constructed to attain the joints variable at each point without collision. The D*algorithm and Euclidean distance are applied to obtain the exact and estimated distances to the goal respectively. The modified Particle Swarm Optimization al
... Show MoreLattakia city faces many problems related to the mismanagement of solid waste, as the disposal process is limited to the random Al-Bassa landfill without treatment. Therefore, solid waste management poses a special challenge to decision-makers by choosing the appropriate tool that supports strategic decisions in choosing municipal solid waste treatment methods and evaluating their management systems. As the human is primarily responsible for the formation of waste, this study aims to measure the degree of environmental awareness in the Lattakia Governorate from the point of view of the research sample members and to discuss the effect of the studied variables (place of residence, educational level, gender, age, and professional status) o
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