Cytokines are signaling molecules between inflammatory cells that play a significant role in the pathogenesis of a disease. Among these cytokines are interleukins (ILs) 17A and 33, and accordingly, the current case-control study sought to investigate the role of each of the two cytokines in the risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS). Sixty-eight relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) Iraqi patients and twenty healthy individuals (control group) were enrolled. Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits were used to determine serum levels of IL-17A and IL-33. Results revealed that IL-17A and IL-33 levels were significantly higher in MS patients than in controls (14.1 ± 4.5 vs. 7.5 ± 3.8 pg/mL; p < 0.001 and 65.3 ± 16.3 vs. 49.3 ± 20.0 pg/mL; p < 0.001, respectively). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis demonstrated that IL-17A was a very good predictor of MS (area under curve [AUC] = 0.869; 95% CI = 0.779 - 0.960; p < 0.001; cut-off value = 10.2 pg/mL; sensitivity = 80.8%; specificity = 75.0%). A similar prediction was presented by IL-33, but the AUC value was lower (AUC = 0.762; 95% CI = 0.63 - 0.89; p < 0.001; cut-off value = 56.4 pg/mL; sensitivity = 70.6%; specificity = 70.0%). Multinomial logistic regression analysis confirmed the significance of IL-17A and IL-33 in MS risk, and under three models of analysis, the estimated odds ratios for IL-17A (1.50, 1.49 and 1.50, respectively) and IL-33 (1.05, 1.05 and 1.06) were above 1.0. Patients stratified by gender (male and female), expanded disability status scale (EDSS: < 3 and ≥ 3) or medication (pre- and post-medication) showed no significant differences in serum levels of IL-17A and IL-33 for each stratum. However, with regard to response to medication, it was found that responding patients showed significantly higher levels of IL-33 than non-responders (70.9 ± 12.2 vs. 57.2 ± 18.2 pg/mL; p = 0.018). This difference was not observed when considering IL-17A. Pearson correlation analysis between IL-17A and IL-33 revealed that both cytokines were not significantly correlated. In conclusion, the study indicated that IL-17A and IL-33 were up-regulated in serum of MS patients, and this up-regulation was not influenced by age, gender, EDSS or medication status, but the elevated level of IL-33 was more pronounced in patients who responded to medication.
The increasing rates of consumption of cigarettes harmful, to health in the world in general, and in Iraq in particular, and because of the costs borne by individuals, and the state as a result of addressing its damage, as well as Iraq's commitment, to international conventions against cigarettes, and demands of the World Health Organization, to raise prices to reduce consumption. Therefore, the tax Selectivity is one of the most important ways of regulating the consumption of this commodity on the one hand and increasing the tax revenue on the other. The research aims to shed light on the issue of selective tax on cigarettes and the impact of their application in increasing tax revenues and identify the effectiveness of the application
... Show Moreيتكون الانحدار المقسم من عدة أقسام تفصل بينها نقاط انتماء مختلفة، فتظهر حالة عدم التجانس الناشئة من عملية فصل الأقسام ضمن عينة البحث. ويهتم هذا البحث في تقدير موقع نقطة التغيير بين الأقسام وتقدير معلمات الأنموذج، واقتراح طريقة تقدير حصينة ومقارنتها مع بعض الطرائق المستعملة في الانحدار الخطي المقسم. وقد تم استعمال أحد الطرائق التقليدية (طريقة Muggeo) لإيجاد مقدرات الإمكان الأعظم بالأسلوب الت
... Show MoreIn this paper, new method have been investigated using evolving algorithms (EA's) to cryptanalysis one of the nonlinear stream cipher cryptosystems which depends on the Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) unit by using cipher text-only attack. Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) which are used for attacking one of the nonlinear cryptosystems called "shrinking generator" using different lengths of cipher text and different lengths of combined LFSRs. GA and ACO proved their good performance in finding the initial values of the combined LFSRs. This work can be considered as a warning for a stream cipher designer to avoid the weak points, which may be f
... Show MorePhotonic crystal fiber interferometers are used in many sensing applications. In this work, an in-reflection photonic crystal fiber (PCF) based on Mach-Zehnder (micro-holes collapsing) (MZ) interferometer, which exhibits high sensitivity to different volatile organic compounds (VOCs), without the needing of any permeable material. The interferometer is robust, compact, and consists of a stub photonic crystal fiber of large-mode area, photonic crystal fiber spliced to standard single mode fiber (SMF) (corning-28), this splicing occurs with optimized splice loss 0.19 dB In the splice regions the voids of the holey fiber are completely collapsed, which allows the excitation and recombination of core and cladding modes. The device reflection
... Show MoreE-mail is an efficient and reliable data exchange service. Spams are undesired e-mail messages which are randomly sent in bulk usually for commercial aims. Obfuscated image spamming is one of the new tricks to bypass text-based and Optical Character Recognition (OCR)-based spam filters. Image spam detection based on image visual features has the advantage of efficiency in terms of reducing the computational cost and improving the performance. In this paper, an image spam detection schema is presented. Suitable image processing techniques were used to capture the image features that can differentiate spam images from non-spam ones. Weighted k-nearest neighbor, which is a simple, yet powerful, machine learning algorithm, was used as a clas
... Show MoreCement is a major component in oil and gas drilling operations that is used to maintain the integrity of boreholes by preventing the movement of formation fluids through the annular space and outside the casing. In 2019, Iraq National Oil Company ordered all international oil and gas companies which are working in Iraq to use Iraqi cement (made in Iraq) in all Iraqi oil fields; however, the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and compressive strength results in this study show that this cement is not matching with American Petroleum Institute (API) standards.
During this study, barolift was used to improve the properties of Iraqi cement used in oil wells at high pressure and high temperature (HPHT). Barolift (1 g) was added to cement admixt
... Show MoreIn this research, we use fuzzy nonparametric methods based on some smoothing techniques, were applied to real data on the Iraqi stock market especially the data about Baghdad company for soft drinks for the year (2016) for the period (1/1/2016-31/12/2016) .A sample of (148) observations was obtained in order to construct a model of the relationship between the stock prices (Low, high, modal) and the traded value by comparing the results of the criterion (G.O.F.) for three techniques , we note that the lowest value for this criterion was for the K-Nearest Neighbor at Gaussian function .
تنفذ أجهزة اإلحصاء الدولية ومنها الجهاز المركزي لإلحصاء في العراقإحدى أجهزة وزارة التخطيط، تقوم بإجراء مسوح سنوية ودورية لإنتاج مؤشرات تقييم وتقويم أنشطة القطاعات الاقتصادية المختلفة. يتيح هذا الكم الهائل من البيانات بشكل سلسل زمني لهذه الأجهزة إنتاج مؤشرات جديدة، بما في ذلك القيم التنبؤية لمؤشرات رئيسية تستخدم في إعداد الخطط طويلة وقصيرة المدى. في عام 2015، قامت مديرية الإحصاء الزراعي في الجهاز المركزي للإ
... Show Moreمن خلال ملاحظة الباحثتين الميدانية لمستوى الأداء الفني لمنتخب ناشئات القطر بالجمناستك لمهارة قفزة اليدين الأمامية على جهاز منصة القفز الحديثة لاحظن وجود مشكلة تكمن في ضعف هذا الأداء والذي يؤثر على بعض المتغيرات البيوكينماتيكية لهذه المهارة مما يؤدي إلى عدم أداء المهارة بالشكل الصحيح ، وتعزو الباحثتان ذلك الضعف إلى قلة الدفع بالرجلين والذراعين . لذا ارتأت الباحثتان إجراء هذا البحث الذي يهدف إلى تنمية القوة
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