Background: Gingivitis is one of the most common and widely spread oral diseases in adolescents after dental caries occur in both developed and developing countries. Dental plaque is the main etiological factor of gingivitis. Another oral problem is enamel defect. The aim of this study was to estimate the oral hygiene (dental plaque), and determine the prevalence and severity of gingivitis and enamel defects among 16-17 years old secondary school female students in urban areas of Kirkuk city/Iraq. Materials and methods: A representative sample included in this study consisted of 750 secondary school female students distributed into 387 for the age sixteen and 363 for the age seventeen, they were selected randomly from different female secon

Background and objective: Viral Hepatitis Type B&C is serious public health challenge throughout the world.Hepatitis B and C viruses still remain to be the major causes of chronic hepatitis.It is estimated that around 350-400 million people in the world are chronic carriers of HBV, which represents approximately 7% of the total populationwhereas infection with HCV is found in approximately 3% of the world population, which represents 160 million people. Hepatitis B infection has a wide range of seroprevalence in the Mediterranean countries ranging from intermediate (=>2% ) to high prevalence ( =>7%). World Health Organization estimated a prevalence rate for HCV infection of about 4.6% in Eastern Mediterranean in 1999. During the eightieths

Background: Water-pipe can be defined as a single or multi stemmed device that used to vaporize and smoke flavored tobacco whose smoke is passed via water vase before inhalation. Water-pipe smokers are at risk of exposure to many toxic chemicals that are not filtered by water, as well as risk of infectious diseases when the mouth piece of the water-pipe is shared. This study was carried out to investigate the effect of water pipe on the oral health. Materials and Methods: Sixty persons were included in this study aged between 22 and 23 years. Forty persons were coffee shop workers for at least five years, half of them were water-pipe smokers (active smokers) and the other weren’t smokers (passive smoker), the last group was the co

the association between celiac disease and viral infection

The mean age of AS patients was (35.0 ± 9.8) years.When the patients and control subjects were divided into different age groups (>40, 30-40, <30 years), the differences were not significantin terms of disease prevalence. The results also showed that the percentage of male patients is higher than that of females. There was no significant difference (P?0.05) between patients and controls in the distribution of males and females.Most of the patients had the disease for a period of 5 years or higher, with a disease severity of ? 2.1 and functional disability degree of I, II. The resultsshoweddifferent patterns of distribution for the three tested cytokines. A significant increase in the level of TNF-?, anon-significantincrease i