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.
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The problem of research is that there are ways to protect and sustain environmentally important sites in Iraq. There are no documentary sources for these sites, such as the natural landscape of natural and important natural resources, which suffer from severe environmental neglect
A stylistic study in the poetry of Hafiz Ibrahim, praise be to God, Lord of the worlds, and prayers and peace be upon his best messengers, and the seal of his prophets, Muhammad and his good and pure family, and after ...
The poet Hafez Ibrahim is considered one of the well-known poets in the modern era, and his language was distinguished by sobriety, eloquence in expressions, and beautiful meanings And he had my journey in the study of his poetry a stylistic study, and the research came with an introduction in which the concept of stylistics was briefly explained, since it was studied by many researchers, then divided the research into three topics: I studied in the first the construction of the poem, and I stood at the most importan
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Purpose: The research seeks to develop the implications of intellectual human capital, and social capital in business organizations, and will be accomplished on three levels, the first level (the level of description) to identify, diagnose and display content philosophical Strategic Human Resource Management at the thought of modern administrative represented by human capital and Ras social capital. The second level (level of analysis) and the analysis of the extent of the impact of alignment between human capital, and social capital in the organizational strength of the organizations. The third level (Level predict) the formulation of a plan to strengthen the organizational strength in business organizations and to develop speci
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The study aimed to monitor the concept of reputation in the previous literature, its relationship to mental image and identity, and to reveal recent trends in its measurement Techniques.
The study relied on a descriptive approach using library survey and comparative analysis, and the study reached following conclusions:
Despite the beginning of the first signs of reputation In the fifties of the last century, however, Defining and standardizing the concept with clear and specific dimensions began in the 1990s and the beginning of the third millennium. The concept of reputation refers to the stakeholders’ overall evaluation of organizations, which reflects their perceptions of
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This article aims to provide a bibliometric analysis of intellectual capital research published in the Scopus database from 1956 to 2020 to trace the development of scientific activities that can pave the way for future studies by shedding light on the gaps in the field. The analysis focuses on 638 intellectual capital-related papers published in the Scopus database over 60 years, drawing upon a bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer. This paper highlights the mainstream of the current research in the intellectual capital field, based on the Scopus database, by presenting a detailed bibliometric analysis of the trend and development of intellectual capital research in the past six decades, including journals, authors, countries, inst
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Numeral recognition is considered an essential preliminary step for optical character recognition, document understanding, and others. Although several handwritten numeral recognition algorithms have been proposed so far, achieving adequate recognition accuracy and execution time remain challenging to date. In particular, recognition accuracy depends on the features extraction mechanism. As such, a fast and robust numeral recognition method is essential, which meets the desired accuracy by extracting the features efficiently while maintaining fast implementation time. Furthermore, to date most of the existing studies are focused on evaluating their methods based on clean environments, thus limiting understanding of their potential a
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