Background: Chromogranin A is a useful tumor marker for neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) diagnosis & follow-up, Octreotide (somatostatin-long acting repeatable (SAS-LAR)) is an established treatment for NETs. Studies regarding the relation between response to SAS-LAR & the change in Chromogranin A (CgA) plasma level are still lacking.
Objectives: To determine the association between the using of Octreotide (SAS-LAR) and CgA level on time sequence & clinical status.
Patients & methods: a prospective observational study included 38 neuroendocrine patients in The Oncology Teaching Hospital/medical city complex/Baghdad, started at September 2013 till May 2016; assessing their circulating chromogranin A (CgA) plasma levels on multiple occasions(0,2 and 4 months) by ELISA technique and its correlation with response to somatostatin analogues (SAS-LAR) in those patients.
Results: the study recruited 38 neuroendocrine patients. 21 (55%) of them were males, 23 (60%) patients were older than 50 years old & 17 (44%) had metastasis to different sites. Somatostatin analogues (octreotide 30mg) was administered to 20 out of 38 (52.6%) studied patients. Serial CgA tests were performed in (17 out of 20) patients used SAS-LAR, with a change in mean value from (225.3 U/L) pre-using the agent to (17.5 U/L) two months after its use & to (8.7 U/L) four months after its use (p=0.009, p=0.002 respectively) while the change in mean of CgA level was from (205.9 U/L) to (200.9 U/L) in 10 patients who did not use Octreotide (p=0.2).Also results showed that no statistically significant difference in mean value of CgA pre & two months after using Octreotide with regard to grade of the tumor.
Conclusions: Plasma CgA is a reliable marker for NETs (regarding diagnosis, prognosis and response to treatment including somatostatin analogues).All patients with NETs should undergo a baseline plasma CgA level at diagnosis. Serial assessment of circulating CgA could be done for NET patients when there is baseline elevation of CgA level in circulation
The question on affine Riesz basis of Walsh affine systems is considered. An affine Riesz basis is constructed, generated by a continuous periodic function that belongs to the space on the real line, which has a derivative almost everywhere; in connection with the construction of this example, we note that the functions of the classical Walsh system suffer a discontinuity and their derivatives almost vanish everywhere. A method of regularization (improvement of differential properties) of the generating function of Walsh affine system is proposed, and a criterion for an affine Riesz basis for a regularized generating function that can be represented as a sum of a series in the Rademacher system is obtained.
This paper presents stochastic analysis using the perturbation method to model the structure of a container to verify the distributions of probability of maximum and minimum axial forces reactions in piles. The proposed simulation of a container port terminal under 11 scenarios of load combinations was presented. The probability distributions for live loads are assigned according to the input parameters of simulation data. Part of the load itself is implicitly combined such as vertical live load which includes the weight of equipment and containers and wind load. The structural model was simulated in the software STAAD Pro., while the statistical analyses were performed with MATLAB. The results demonstrated that, the most significant extern
... Show MoreBackground: All medical colleges give students courses in epidemiology and biostatistics to help them in understanding medical data and to prepare them to conduct graduate and professional research. After graduation, understanding and correct application of the principles of epidemiology and biostatistics help the physicians in making better diagnostic and management decision based on best evidence.
Patients and Methods: A cross-sectional questionnaire-based survey was carried out among junior (chronic resident) doctors at several hospitals in Baghdad from the 1st of January till the 31st October 2009. A total of 212 physicians answered the questionnaire which covered demographic characteristics, average score
Background: It has been accepted that in patients with CSOM, conductive deafness results from mechanical break-down of sound conduction ,whilist the cochlea remains unaffected.
Objectives: Our study aims to prove a sensorineural component in hearing loss in patients suffering from CSOM , which necissates early detection as it increases in severity with time.
Methods: A prospective study was done on 64 patients, all were diagnosed as having unilateral CSOM, their ages ranged from 18-40 years to exclude presbyacusis as a cause of sensorineural deafness.
These patients were divided into 4 groups according to the duration of discharge and further divided into 3 groups according to the pathology (simple perforation, granulation tissu
In this paper Heun method has been used to find numerical solution for first order nonlinear functional differential equation. Moreover, this method has been modified in order to treat system of nonlinear functional differential equations .two numerical examples are given for conciliated the results of this method.
In this paper, The transfer function model in the time series was estimated using different methods, including parametric Represented by the method of the Conditional Likelihood Function, as well as the use of abilities nonparametric are in two methods local linear regression and cubic smoothing spline method, This research aims to compare those capabilities with the nonlinear transfer function model by using the style of simulation and the study of two models as output variable and one model as input variable in addition t
... Show MoreThe aim of this paper is to study the convergence of an iteration scheme for multi-valued mappings which defined on a subset of a complete convex real modular. There are two main results, in the first result, we show that the convergence with respect to a multi-valued contraction mapping to a fixed point. And, in the second result, we deal with two different schemes for two multivalued mappings (one of them is a contraction and other has a fixed point) and then we show that the limit point of these two schemes is the same. Moreover, this limit will be the common fixed point the two mappings.