Chitinase-3-like 1 protein (YKL-40) is a glycoprotein primarily produced in the arthritic joint and plays a crucial role in inflammatory processes. The aim of the study is to establish the role of YKL-40 as a biomarker for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) compared to proinflammatory biomarkers and disease activity. The study included 58 patients and 18 control. Diseases activity score (DAS-28) and clinical disease activity index (CDAI) were measured. Serum level of YKL-40, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-1B (IL-1β), erythrocyte sedimentation (ESR), rheumatoid factor (RF), C-reactive protein (CRP), and anti-citrullinated protein antibody (ACPA) were assessed. The results showed that the median serum YKL-40 level which was 5.42 ng/ml, the TNF-a level which was 123.6 ng/ml, and the IL-1B level which was 204.365 pg/dl were significantly higher in patients compared to control 3.28 (1.58–4.99) ng/ml, 56.47 (9.38–77.01) ng/ml and 67.887 (15.493–122.689)pg/dl respectively. There was no correlation between serum YKL-40 and disease activity, while there were significant associations observed with TNF-α (r=0.5,p =0.0001) and IL-1β (r=0.41, p=0.001). YKL-40 indicating good levels of RA prediction at 2.47 ng/ml, sensitivity 87.9%, specificity 58.6%, accuracy 78.1%, PPV 80.9%, and NPV 70.8%. In conclusion, a higher level of serum YKL-40 is found in RA patients. The findings from our study suggest a strong association between YKL-40 and the proinflammatory biomarkers. As a result, these biomarkers together might play a role in RA pathogenesis, and YKL-40 may be used as a potential diagnostic biomarker for RA.
Given the importance of ecology and its entry into various fields in general and the urban environment particularly; ecological cities take wide ranges of application at multiple regional and global levels. However, it repeatedly noted that there was a state of cognitive confusion and overlapping in the term ecology comes from the diversity of implementation within several disciplines. Architects, designers, and planners have instilled biological development directly into the formal principles as well as the social structures of the ecological cities. Therefore, the research presents a rapid review of the most relevant areas that dealt with the ecological cities by research and analysis at various levels, from the concept and definition of
... Show MoreMost heuristic search method's performances are dependent on parameter choices. These parameter settings govern how new candidate solutions are generated and then applied by the algorithm. They essentially play a key role in determining the quality of the solution obtained and the efficiency of the search. Their fine-tuning techniques are still an on-going research area. Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm is a very powerful optimization method and has become popular in many fields. Based on the prolonged research work on DE, it is now arguably one of the most outstanding stochastic optimization algorithms for real-parameter optimization. One reason for its popularity is its widely appreciated property of having only a small number of par
... Show MoreAThe Bridge Maintenance Management System (BMMS) is an application system that uses existing data from a Bridge Management System database for monitoring and analysis of current bridges performance, as well as for estimating the current and future maintenance and rehabilitation needs of the bridges. In a transportation context, the maintenance management is described as a cost-effective process to operate, construct, and maintain physical money. This needs analytical tools to support the allocation of resources, materials, equipment, including personnel, and supplies. Therefore, Geographic Information System (GIS) can be considered as one tool to develop the road and bridge maintenanc
Predicting peterophysical parameters and doing accurate geological modeling which are an active research area in petroleum industry cannot be done accurately unless the reservoir formations are classified into sub-groups. Also, getting core samples from all wells and characterize them by geologists are very expensive way; therefore, we used the Electro-Facies characterization which is a simple and cost-effective approach to classify one of Iraqi heterogeneous carbonate reservoirs using commonly available well logs.
The main goal of this work is to identify the optimum E-Facies units based on principal components analysis (PCA) and model based cluster analysis(MC
... Show MoreThis paper presents the motion programming and control of omni-directional mobile robot through the process of building and programming a small robotic platform with secondary design criteria of modularity and simplified control. This is accomplished by combining the positive aspects of several different robotics platform ideas. The platform is shaped like an equilateral triangle with a servo motor, sensors, and omni-wheel, controlled by a PIC microcontroller.
In this work the kinematics, inverse kinematics and dynamic module for the platform is derived. Two search algorithms (the wall-following search and the “most-open-area” search) is designed, tested, and analyzed experimentally.
The frequent and widespread use of medicines and personal care products, particularly in the residential environment, tends to raise concerns about environmental and human health impacts. On the other hand, carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere is a problem with numerous environmental consequences. Microalgae are being used to bioremediate toxins and capture CO2. The current study aimed to confirm the possibility of removing pharmaceutical contaminant (Ranitidine) at different concentrations by using the Chlorella Sorokiniana MH923013 microalgae strain during the growth time. As part of the experiment, carbon dioxide was added to the culture medium three times per week. Explanatory results revealed that gas doses directly affect
... Show MoreThis study focuses on the behavior of simply supported perforated prestressed concrete rafters (PPCRs) under single midspan monotonic static loading. The experimental program consisted of testing seven specimens; one solid (control) rafter, and six perforated with quadrilateral openings. The main investigated variables are the number and height of the openings. The test findings indicate that, in comparison to the solid rafter, the presence of quadrilateral openings in the PPCRs led to reducing the load capacity by (4.3-36%) and increase the midspan deflection at ultimate by (14.8-33%). Also, increasing the number of concrete posts between openings resulted in increasing the failure load and decreasing the deflection at all stages o
... Show MoreRecently, complementary perfect corona domination in graphs was introduced. A dominating set S of a graph G is said to be a complementary perfect corona dominating set (CPCD – set) if each vertex in is either a pendent vertex or a support vertex and has a perfect matching. The minimum cardinality of a complementary perfect corona dominating set is called the complementary perfect corona domination number and is denoted by . In this paper, our parameter hasbeen discussed for power graphs of path and cycle.
Congenital hand and forearm anomalies pose a unique challenge in plastic and pediatric surgery. We present a case report of an 8- months-old girl with a congenital left sided hand and forearm anomaly, provisionally diagnosed as atypical left mirror hand anomaly. Classically there is absence of radius and duplication of ulna; however, our case had normal radius and ulna and a hand with seven digits arranged in two groups. We did a surgery which involved a ray amputation of the finger ulnar to the most radial digit, aiming to preserve an adequate first web space to reconstruct the thumb. The result of the surgical treatment in both functional and cosmetic aspects was, in authors’ opinion, good.
