Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS) affecting young adults and is considered as the leading cause of non traumatic neurological disability of young adults affecting nearly 2 million people worldwide. The pathogenesis of MS is at best incompletely understood. There are several proposed mechanisms that may be important in the production of MS plaques: autoimmunity, environment and heredity. Deviation of immune responses in a genetically susceptible patient plays a central role in its pathogenesis. Electrophysiological, spinal tap and Radiological tools are important laboratory investigations and have added so much to the clinical diagnosis and for the classification of MS. It was found that visual function and conduction has been changed in patients with multiple sclerosis.
Objectives: The aims of the study is to estimate and evaluate the visual evoked potential (VEP) parameters in patients with MS and its relation to their disability degree (using the expanded disability status scale score "EDSS") and visual presentation of them in comparison with healthy individuals.
Patients and Methods: 112 patients with multiple sclerosis and 50 subjects without any neurological or psychiatric diseases as control group were recruited in this study. The cases were collected from Baghdad teaching hospital, MS center, Baghdad, Iraq at the period from May 2012 to April 2013, and studied at the unit of electrophysiology in Al-Shaheed Ghazi Al-Hareri Hospital in the Medical city. All patients and control groups were tested for VEP.
Results: The present study showed a significant increase in the P100 latency and inter-ocular (IO) latency difference and non statistical significant decrease in the IO amplitude difference in patients group than the control group. Also among patients group there was positive linear correlation between the severity of the disease measured by EDSS score and P100 latency while negative linear correlation with the amplitude.
Conclusion: There was a higher percent of patients with defective VEP parameters and so their visual pathway even if it was asymptomatic, in addition to their relation with patients` disability than the control group, making it easy to quantify and predict MS disability objectively.
Keywords: Multiple sclerosis, Expanded Disability Status Scale, VEP.
Agricultural development occupies an important position in the economies of developing countries, and its role is greater for the Arab countries. The first task is to provide food security for all the population through sustainable development, which includes the investment of available natural resources and employment opportunities for the rural population, As well as the provision of raw materials for agricultural processing in order to increase agricultural exports to reduce the balance of payments deficit. Sustainable development is linked to increased production and improvement, as well as to food security. On the one hand, it has to cope with the increase in population and if it is possible to achieve a surplus allocated for export, a
... Show MoreThe provision of electric power is necessary for the advancement of the country's economy. It is the main engine of the economy and its various activities. It is an indicator of social welfare and it is considered as the basic pillars for achieving sustainable development (economic, social, environmental and institutional) by raising the levels of performance and meeting local needs. The problem of research was the absence of a program to audit the performance of the electricity sector contributes to ensure the application of sustainable development. The research was based on the hypothesis that the preparation of a proposed program to audit the performance of the electricity sector contributes to the achievement of The researchers sough
... Show MoreRecently, Malaysia has been recognized as one of the most popular destinations for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Southeast Asia. But how do these FDI inflows affect Malaysia economy? This paper aims to identify the role of FDI inflows in Malaysia economic growth through a proposed endogenous growth model. Annual data covers from 1975 to 2010. Unit root test and Johansen Co-integration test are adopted to respectively verify the time series data is stable and the linear combination of the variables is stationary. Hierarchical Multiple Regressions (HMR) Analysis is then conducted to find out the momentum of the Malaysia economic growth including FDI inflows. The results show that the FDI inflows together with the human capital deve
... Show MoreBackground: Asthma is an allergic disease characterized by airway obstruction as a result of cellular accumulation due to the liberation of certain mediators. Among those mediators are the cytokines such as IL-5.
Patients & Methods: Interleukin-5 concentration has been estimated in 94 sera samples of Asthmatic patients in comparison with 41 non-asthmatic bronchitis as patient controls in addition to 30 apparent healthy control group using ELISA method.
Results & Conclusions: There is highly significant elevation of IL-5 in the asthmatic cases in comparison with healthy controls (P< 0.001). We conclude that this cytokine may play the major
role in asthmatic attack & it may be a good m
This paper examines a new nonlinear system of multiple integro-differential equations containing symmetric matrices with impulsive actions. The numerical-analytic method of ordinary differential equations and Banach fixed point theorem are used to study the existence, uniqueness and stability of periodic solutions of impulsive integro-differential equations with piecewise continuous functions. This study is based on the Hölder condition in which the ordering , and are real numbers between 0 and 1.
The -mixing of - transition in Er 168 populated in Er)n,n(Er 168168 reaction is calculated in the present work by using a2- ratio method. This method has used in previou studies [4, 5, 6, 7] in case that the second transition is pure or for that transition which can be considered as pure only, but in one work we applied this method for two cases, in the first one for pure transition and in the 2nd one for non pure transitions. We take into accunt the experimental a2- coefficient for p revious works and -values for one transition only [1]. The results obtained are, in general, in agood agreement within associated errors, with those reported previously [1], the discrepancies that occur are due to inaccuracies existing
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This study is concerned with the reality of total quality management and its role in achieving the excellence performance of the employees of the Institute of Technology / Baghdad, excellence performance is described by the extent to which the organization is able to invest the effort of the human resource to achieve its Objectives by adopting the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) according to some of its basic dimensions in proportion to the reality and Possibilities Institute, the aim is to study to know the reality of total quality management ,and indicate the levels of excellence performance in the Institute of Technology / Baghdad,
... Show MoreThis article makes it possible to verify the role of quality management in strengthening the innovation process. The first hypothesis, according to which the quality (certification ISO 9001) influences the innovation positively, is confirmed for certain innovation indicators. Another hypothesis indicates that there are the levels of quality which develop the innovation process in diverse ways. The results indicate that for some domains of innovation, the performance of innovation of enterprises that have a very increased level of quality is higher than those of enterprises with an average quality, which in return is higher than those enterprises having a low quality level. Therefore, we discovered that the difference of performance innov
... Show MoreThis case control study aimed to determine single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the Kisspeptin (KISS1) gene in males with idiopathic infertility and their association with sex hormones and semen quality. The study included a total of 60 infertile and 30 healthy fertile males. Our results show that the level of the measured hormones (LH, FSH, Testosterone, Prolactin and Kisspeptin-54) were higher in the control group than in the male infertile group at p<0.05. We used polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RELP) for the genotyping of KISS1 position rs35431622 (Q36R) KISS1, which showed three different genotypes of different sizes; a wild-type homozygous AA of 233 bp and a h
... Show MoreBackground: Dimensional changes of acrylic denture bases after polymerization results in need for further adjustments or even ends with technical failure of the finished dentures. The purpose of this study was to estimate the linear dimensional changes for different palatal depths when using multiple investment materials and polymerization techniques. Materials and methods: Ninety upper complete denture bases were constructed for this study. They were divided into two main groups according to the polymerization methods: conventional water bath and experimental autoclave (short and long cycles). Each main group was further subdivided into three subgroups according to the palatal depth (shallow, medium and deep). Furthermore, for each palatal
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