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.
Abstract
The research stems from the problem that focuses on a number of questions. They are as follows: What is the extent of interest in the topic of efficiency by the banks and their role in raising the efficiency of the banking business and its development? Is the banking efficiency used in Iraqi banks clear and specific for the Iraqi banking sector? How the banking sector efficiency is measured and what are the approaches adopted in determining the banking inputs and outputs? What is the level of efficiency in the research sample of the banks and what are the causes of its decline or rise in private banks individually and in the Iraqi banking sector in general?
The re
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The current research problem includes a variety of research motivations to serve the private health sector, which is witnessing a great competition from internal and external environments. In this regard, private medical clinics are increasingly seeking to attract and retain customers through the quality of their service offerings represented by health services. Innovative and effective marketing methods to improve performance and stay in competition, by relying on the physical evidence of the product as a component of the marketing mix of services and its role in particular in packaging and supporting the health service with concrete evidence that affects the customer an
... Show MoreThis research develops a new method based on spectral indices and random forest classifier to detect paddy rice areas and then assess their distributions regarding to urban areas. The classification will be conducted on Landsat OLI images and Landsat OLI/Sentinel 1 SAR data. Consequently, developing a new spectral index by analyzing the relative importance of Landsat bands will be calculated by the random forest. The new spectral index has improved depending on the most three important bands, then two additional indices including the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and standardized difference built-up index (NDBI) have been used to extract paddy rice fields from the data. Several experiments being
... Show MoreThis study was conducted to describe a protocol for the callus establishing culture of Lavandula angustifolia plant and estimating their content of volatile oil. The quantity of volatile oil callus tissues was compared with that of leaves production. Callus was induced from leaf explants on Murashige and Skoog medium (MS) supplemented with Naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) and Benzyl adenine (BA) in different concentrations. Maximum callus fresh weight was obtained in the combination of 10 mg/L BA and 3 mg/L NAA which reached 18 g after four weeks. The results of this work showed that the quantity of volatile oil from the highest fresh weight callus was 6 ml compared with quantity of 18g of leaves which gave 0.5 ml. Volatile o
... Show MoreThe current research aimed to analyze the importance, correlation and the effect of independent variables represented by marketing variables on the dependent variable represented by local brand, through taking ENIEM as a model for this study, which represents a sensitive sector for the Algerian consumer. The results of the study evinced that the Algerian consumer has a positive image toward the brand ENIEM given marketing variables which has acquired considerable importance to this consumer. Also, the results of this study showed a statistically significant correlation between marketing variables and good perception toward the brand ENIEM, at the same time, the existence of a statistically significant effect for each of these variables o
... Show MoreData security is an important component of data communication and transmission systems. Its main role is to keep sensitive information safe and integrated from the sender to the receiver. The proposed system aims to secure text messages through two security principles encryption and steganography. The system produced a novel method for encryption using graph theory properties; it formed a graph from a password to generate an encryption key as a weight matrix of that graph and invested the Least Significant Bit (LSB) method for hiding the encrypted message in a colored image within a green component. Practical experiments of (perceptibility, capacity, and robustness) were calculated using similarity measures like PSNR, MSE, and
... Show MoreA laboratory experiment has been carried out in the College of Science-University of Salahaddin to study the effect of different levels (0,5,10 and 15%) and sizes(250 and 1000µm) of walnut seeds residues and (160mg.kg-1) phosphorus fertilization on the concentration of phosphorus availability and alkaline phosphatase activity in calcareous soil during 15 and 30 days period of incubation, the experimental design in factorial complet randomize design (C.R.D) with three replications. The results indicated that the application of different levels of walnut seed residues decreases the concentration of phosphorus availability and alkaline phosphatase activity, however the results revealed that combination between levels and sizes o
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Flavonoids were extracted from Zizyphus spina-christi leaves by Ethyl acetate after acid digested and used as antioxidant. The dried extract was added separately to each sample of fat extracted from hallow cow and sheep bones as follows: T1 cow fat, T2 control for cow fat, T3 sheep fat and T4 control for sheep fat (the control T2 and T4 reffered to samples without added antioxidant).
Samples were stored at -18, 5, 25 and 55 °C for 28 days. The storage trials were conducted at -18, 5 and 25 °C for 28 days for T1, T2, T3 and T4. The chemical indices examined initially and at the end of storage period. PVs was 1.46, 1.46, 1.8 and 1.8 meq/ Kg oil respectively, FFA values were 0.245, 0.245, 0.244 and 0.244% respectively and TBA va