Anemia of chronic disease (ACD) and iron deficiency anemia (IDA) are the two most important types of anemia in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Functional iron deficiency in ACD can be attributed to overexpression of the main iron regulatory hormone hepcidin leading to diversion of iron from the circulation into storage sites resulting in iron-restricted erythropoiesis. The aim is to investigate the role of circulating hepcidin and to uncover the frequency of IDA in RA. The study included 51 patients with RA. Complete blood counts, serum iron, total iron binding capacity, ferritin, and hepcidin- 25 were assessed. ACD was found in 37.3% of patients, IDA in 11.8%, and combined (ACD/IDA) in 17.6%. Serum hepcidin was higher in ACD than in con

Background: Anemia is a common finding in patients with renal failure disease and it is, primarily, due to reduced production of iron and erythropoietin. Therefore, the aim of current study was to evaluate the relationship between serum level of hepcidin 25, on the one hand, and levels of serum iron, total iron-binding capacity, serum erythropoietin and transferrin saturation% in Iraqi male patients undrgoning haemodialysis.. Methods: Serum from75 males in the end stage of hemodialysis, as group one, and 25 Iraqi healthy malecontrols, as group two, were recruited in this study. Results: Data from current study showed significant increase in hepcidin 25 and significant decrease in serum iron, total iron-binding capacity, transferrin saturati

The interests toward developing accurate automatic face emotion recognition methodologies are growing vastly, and it is still one of an ever growing research field in the region of computer vision, artificial intelligent and automation. However, there is a challenge to build an automated system which equals human ability to recognize facial emotion because of the lack of an effective facial feature descriptor and the difficulty of choosing proper classification method. In this paper, a geometric based feature vector has been proposed. For the classification purpose, three different types of classification methods are tested: statistical, artificial neural network (NN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). A modified K-Means clustering algorithm

Background: Acne is a common disorder experienced by adolescents and persists into adulthood in approximately 12%–14% of cases with psychological and social implications of high gravity. Fractional resurfacing employs a unique mechanism of action that repairs a fraction of skin at a time. The untreated healthy skin remains intact and actually aids the repair process, promoting rapid healing with only a day or two of downtime. Aims: This study, was designed to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of fractional photothermolysis (fractionated Er: YAG laser 2940nm) in treating atrophic acne scars. Methods: 7 females and 3 males with moderate to severe atrophic acne scarring were enrolled in this study that attained private clinic for Derm

Facial emotion recognition finds many real applications in the daily life like human robot interaction, eLearning, healthcare, customer services etc. The task of facial emotion recognition is not easy due to the difficulty in determining the effective feature set that can recognize the emotion conveyed within the facial expression accurately. Graph mining techniques are exploited in this paper to solve facial emotion recognition problem. After determining positions of facial landmarks in face region, twelve different graphs are constructed using four facial components to serve as a source for sub-graphs mining stage using gSpan algorithm. In each group, the discriminative set of sub-graphs are selected and fed to Deep Belief Network (DBN) f

A fracture is a damage to bone tissue that causes damage to the tissue surrounding the bone and may penetrate the skin. Subjects and methods: the present study included (80) fractured Iraqi patients (and 40) patients with DM2 and (40) without DM2 and compared them with (40) healthy control. Patients and control are matched in age. This study showed a significant increase in retinol-binding protein 4 (RBP4) and a considerable decrease in Vit .A GPT and GOT in fracture patients with and without DM2. In addition, there was a significant negative correlation between RBP4 with (GPT and GOT) in fracture patients with DM2 and a significant positive correlation between RBP4 with (GPT and GOT) in fracture patients without DM2.          

Background: Recent research indicates that persistent inflammatory responses may contribute to the rise of diabetic nephropathy (DN) and diabetic cardiovascular disease (DCVD) in type 2 diabetes mellitus patients (DM2). Numerous molecules associated with inflammation and angiogenesis have been implicated in the development and progression of DN and DCVD, respectively. Methods: The subjects were separated into five groups: healthy controls (n= 25), type 2 diabetes mellitus patients (n= 30), type 2 diabetes mellitus patients with nephropathy DN (n= 30), and type 2 diabetes mellitus patients with cardiovascular disease DCVD (n= 30). The blood levels of irisin, IL-8, HbA1C, urea, and creatinine were determined. Results: In current study there w

This study investigates the influence of asymmetric involute teeth profiles for helical gears on the bending stress. Theoretically, bending stress has been estimated in spur involute gears which have symmetric teeth profile by based on the Lewis, 1892 equation. Later, this equation is developed by, Abdullah, 2012. to determine the effect of an asymmetric tooth profile for the spur gear on the bending stress. And then these equations are applied with stress concentration factor once for symmetric and once other for asymmetric teeth profile. In this paper, the bending stresses for various types of helical gear with various types of asymmetric teeth profile are calculated numerically for defined the stress concentration fac

The medicinal plants (Astragalus species) have been used traditionally as anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and Anti-diabetics. The current research investigates the phytochemistry and some biological activity of methanol extract of different parts of Astragalus bruguieri Bioss., a wild medicinal plant grows on Safeen mountain, Erbil, Iraq. The methanol extracts of A. bruguieri were analyzed for total phenolic, flavonoid, and saponin contents. In-vitro antioxidant activity was analyzed by 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2,2'-azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) assays. Furthermore, the plant extracts were examined for in-vitro enzyme inhibitory activity and in-v

This study was carried out to evaluate the antioxidant activity of Iraqi sumac seeds (Rhus coriaria. L) (Anacardiaceae). Total phenolic compounds and flavoniods were determined in three different sumac seed extracts (SSE) (aqueous,ethanolic and methanolic extract). For extraction Antioxidant activity of SSE were evaluated by various antioxidant assays, including total antioxidant capacity, reducing power,by using 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl hydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging, nitric oxide scavenging, Hydroxyl radical scavenging, and metal ion chelating activities. These various antioxidant activities were compared with ascorbic acid as a standard antioxidant.The results showed that the three(SSE), contained large amounts of phenolic and flavonio