Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with polymorphic expression. B cells have an essential contribution in immune system activation via the production of different cytokines and functioning as potent antigen-presenting cells. Therefore, a drug that particularly targets B cells may represent an ideal therapeutic approach for SLE. Rituximab (RTX), an anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody causing transient B-cell depletion, has been used to manage SLE. This study aims to assess Rituximab effects on lupus nephritis (LN) patients when added to conventional immunosuppressants. Twenty four patients, 15-32 years old, with class III/IV/V LN were involved in this study. All were on steroids before lupus nephritis occurrence. They were given rituximab induction therapy and mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) maintenance therapy. RTX was indicated for refractory and relapsing SLE. Several investigations done before and after RTX treatment and in the last follow up (done one year after starting Rituximab). Those included protein in urine, serum creatinine, double stranded DNA, C3, C4, and Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (eGFR). Proteinuria decreased significantly after RTX treatment and in the last measurement (P=0.01 and P=0.001, respectively). Serum creatinine significantly decreased only in the last measurement (P=0.02). Double stranded DNA decreased remarkably after treatment (P=0.01) with a further decrease in the last measurement (P=0.006). C3 and C4 increased after treatment but the increase was significant only for C3 (P=0.002) and this increase continues till the last measurement (P=0.0006). Active urine sediments found in fifteen patients and disappeared after RTX treatment. Rituximab can be promising in treating lupus nephritis when used along with traditional immunosuppressants. It can reduce disease activity and improve renal function in such patients.
Cancer is one of the critical health concerns. Health authorities around the world have devoted great attention to cancer and cancer causing factors to achieve control against the increasing rate of cancer. Carcinogens are the most salient factors that are accused of causing a considerable rate of cancer cases. Scientists, in different fields of knowledge, keep warning people of the imminent attack of carcinogens which are surrounding people in the environment and may launch their attack at any moment. The present paper aims to investigate the linguistic construction of the imminent carcinogen attack in English and Arabic scientific discourse. Such an investigation contributes to enhancing the scientists’ awareness of the linguistic co
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The purpose of this paper is to model and forecast the white oil during the period (2012-2019) using volatility GARCH-class. After showing that squared returns of white oil have a significant long memory in the volatility, the return series based on fractional GARCH models are estimated and forecasted for the mean and volatility by quasi maximum likelihood QML as a traditional method. While the competition includes machine learning approaches using Support Vector Regression (SVR). Results showed that the best appropriate model among many other models to forecast the volatility, depending on the lowest value of Akaike information criterion and Schwartz information criterion, also the parameters must be significant. In addition, the residuals
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It was aimed to understand the interleukin-4 (IL-4) role in etio-pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Two approaches were adopted. In the first one, a quantitative expression of IL4 gene was assessed by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), and such findings were correlated with some demographic, clinical and laboratory parameters, which included gender, duration of disease, disease activity score (DAS-28), rheumatoid factors (RFs), C-reactive protein (CRP) and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (ACCP) antibodies. In the second approach, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of IL4 gene (rs2243250) was inspected by DNA sequencing using specific primers. Fifty-one Iraqi RA patients (22 males and 29 fem
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The problem of divorce from the phenomena that characterized the nature of privacy,
although their impact beyond the individual to include the community as a whole, the parties
to the relationship affected by divorce caused them harm moral and material for a long time,
resulting imbalance in the personal relationship and family and social relations because of the
high divorce rates, particularly in Iraq high rates of 28690 thousand cases in 2004 to 59 515
thousand cases in 2011 and an increase of more than (100%) during the period above, and this
rise caused by aggravation of many of the problems led the reasons for social, economic and
incompatibility spouses, health and lack of reproduction, not spending The wife a
Background: Recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS) is one of the most common oral mucosal disorders with a prevalence of 50-66%. The prevalence of hematinic deficiencies including ferritin and vitamin B12 deficiencies and their role in the prophylaxis and development of RAS is not well known. Many studies have demonstrated a high prevalence of hematinic deficiencies in patients with RAS. This study aimed to compare the serum level of ferritin and vitamin B12 in patients with recurrent aphthous ulcers and healthy controls. Subjects, Materials and Methods: The data were collected from patients who needed blood analysis to exclude anemia from November 2020 to May 2021. The study was approved by the institutional ethics committee. After recordi
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