Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a prevalent clinical condition, that affects millions of individuals worldwide. Objective: To assess the level of soluble HLA-E (sHLA-E) as a biomarker in the diagnosis and immunopathogenesis of GERD patients. Methods: The case-control prospective study included 40 GERD patients who were consulted at the Gastroenterology Unit of AlKindy Teaching Hospital, as along with 40 healthy control subjects. The study period extended from January 2023 to May 2024. Blood was drawn from both groups and serum was separated to assesssHLA-E using a sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit. Results: There was a statistically significant difference in sHLA-E levels between GERD patients and healthy controls (P=0.021). The median sHLA-E level was significantly higher in GERD patients (0.370 ng/mL) compared to controls (0.148 ng/mL). A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was generated to evaluate the diagnostic performance of soluble HLA-E (sHLA-E) in predicting GERD. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) was calculated to assess the discriminatory ability of sHLA-E with a vlue of 0.649 (95% CI: 0.534-0.752, p = 0.021). The optimal cutoff value for sHLA-E was determined to be ≤0.65 ng/mL, with a sensitivity of 85.1%, specificity of 27.3%, positive predictive value of 65.9%, negative predictive value of 69.4%, and accuracy of 35.0%. Conclusion: The study provides evidence of an association between elevated sHLA-E levels and GERD. It also suggests that sHLA-E has a moderate discriminatory ability as a biomarker in predicting GERD. © 2025, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved.
Modeling the microclimate of a greenhouse located in Baghdad under its weather conditions to calculate the heating and cooling loads by computer simulation. Solar collectors with a V-corrugated absorber plate and an auxiliary heat source were used as a heating system. A rotary silica gel desiccant dehumidifier, a sensible heat exchanger, and an evaporative cooler were added to the collectors to form an open-cycle solar assisted desiccant cooling system. A dynamic model was adopted to predict the inside air and the soil surface temperatures of the greenhouse. These temperatures are used to predict the greenhouse heating and cooling loads through an energy balance method which takes into account the soil heat gain. This is not included in
... Show MoreThis work is concerned with designing two types of controllers, a PID and a Fuzzy PID, to be used
for flying and stabilizing a quadcopter. The designed controllers have been tuned, tested, and
compared using two performance indices which are the Integral Square Error (ISE) and the Integral
Absolute Error (IAE), and also some response characteristics like the rise time, overshoot, settling
time, and the steady state error. To try and test the controllers, a quadcopter mathematical model has
been developed. The model concentrated on the rotational dynamics of the quadcopter, i.e. the roll,
pitch, and yaw variables. The work has been simulated with “MATLAB”. To make testing the
simulated model and the controllers m
The paper tackles two topics. The first is about the term "Ремейк" which is very common in contemporary Russian literature; it has counterparts such as " Обработка" and " Переделка", where these two may indicate any of the following meanings (remake, reformulate, rewrite, treatment, modification, change). It has been shown that this term does not have a stable definition. Also, the role of this term in literary studies has been mentioned along with how it has come to its peak of use in post-modern literature.
The second is that I have taken a sample of well-known works in Russian literature " On the Eve, On the Eve " by the contemporary Russian writer YevgueniBobov, and shown the effort of the writer
... Show MoreAbstract
This paper tackles the theme of alienation as being a concurrent state of human being from birth to death; so extensive is the description of this state by writers. Alienation has been a product of their hard experiences and miserable lives. One such writer is Jean-Marie Gustave le Clézio who was so perfect in describing alienation in his works. Upon so many occasions, he imagined one or more of his characters as living in a chaotic world and so lived safely in alienation. The novel "Le Procès-Verbal" is one of the most important of his works. This paper deals with e the narrative structure of novel while shedding light on the hero's alienation: its essence and causes.
... Show MoreElectronic Health Record (EHR) systems are used as an efficient and effective method of exchanging patients’ health information with doctors and other key stakeholders in the health sector to obtain improved patient treatment decisions and diagnoses. As a result, questions regarding the security of sensitive user data are highlighted. To encourage people to move their sensitive health records to cloud networks, a secure authentication and access control mechanism that protects users’ data should be established. Furthermore, authentication and access control schemes are essential in the protection of health data, as numerous responsibilities exist to ensure security and privacy in a network. So, the main goal of our s
... Show MoreA remarkable correlation between chaotic systems and cryptography has been established with sensitivity to initial states, unpredictability, and complex behaviors. In one development, stages of a chaotic stream cipher are applied to a discrete chaotic dynamic system for the generation of pseudorandom bits. Some of these generators are based on 1D chaotic map and others on 2D ones. In the current study, a pseudorandom bit generator (PRBG) based on a new 2D chaotic logistic map is proposed that runs side-by-side and commences from random independent initial states. The structure of the proposed model consists of the three components of a mouse input device, the proposed 2D chaotic system, and an initial permutation (IP) table. Statist
... Show MoreNonmissile penetrating spine injury (NMPSI) represents a small percent of spinal cord injuries (SCIs), estimated at 0.8% in Western countries. Regarding the causes, an NMPSI injury caused by a screwdriver is rare. This study reports a case of a retained double-headed screwdriver in a 37-year-old man who sustained a stab injury to the back of the neck, leaving the patient with a C4 Brown-Sequard syndrome (BSS). We discuss the intricacies of the surgical management of such cases with a literature review.
PubMed database was searched by the following combined formula of medical subjects headings,
Vitamin A, namely retinol is still the most proper agent for modulating so many biochemical reactions and biological functions in different tissues and organs. In addition to the provitamins A and α, βand γ-carotenoids that are present in various foods from either animal or plant origin, retinoids and rexinoids form the natural and synthetic analogs that are chemically related or unrelated and can be added as food supplements for deficiency disorders of vitamin A or used to alleviate or treat certain health problems such as skin carcinoma, acne, skin aging and dermatitis.
Cressa cretica (Shuwwayl) is a halophytic that belongs to Convolvulaceae, naturally grown in the Middle East including Iraq. Traditionally the plant is used as a paste for sore treatment, also it is used for fever, jaundice, and other illness. Regarding nonclinical use it is used as goat, sheep, and camel feed also as an oil source. Flavonoids including quercetin, kamepferol, apigenin, and their glycosides, phenolic acid as chlorogenic acid, and phytosterols mainly ?–sitosterol were the most important phytochemicals that were detected in this halophyte. Crude ethanolic, methanolic extracts and ethyl acetate fraction of the areal parts were used in clinical studies and demonstrated various effe
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