Background: Coronary artery disease remains the main cause of death despite several preventive programs. Epicardial adipose tissue is a visceral fat depot of the heart located along the large coronary arteries and on the surface of ventricles and apex. Intima media thickness is commonly recognized as the initial stage in the development of atherosclerosis. The development of ultrasound machines, advances in echocardiographic devices and high resolution transducers facilitate comprehensive analysis of epicardial fat thickness (EFT) and carotid –intima media thickness (C-IMT).
Aim: To investigate the relationship of echocardiographic epicardial fat thickness (EFT) and carotid –intima media thickness (C-IMT) with the severity of coronary artery disease.
Methods: A cross sectional multicenter diagnostic accuracy study carried out at Ibn Al-Nafis Cardiovascular Hospital, Ibn Al- Bitar Cardiology Center and Ghazi Al-Hariri Hospital –Iraqi Center for Cardiology during the period between October 2016 and May 2017 assessing. History regarding demographic data and risk factors was taken. Two dimensional transthoracic echocardiographic measurements were done. EFT was measured from parasternal long axis view perpendicular to the right ventricular free wall. C-IMT was measured according to that recommended by the American society of echocardiography (ASE).
Results: The current study demonstrated that the EFT has a direct and significant correlation with the number of involved vessels (P value ˂ 0.001, r= 0.770). The validity of EFT to discriminate between multiple vessels disease and no vessel involvement is excellent (AUC= 0.984, cut point > 8mm, sensitivity=92.9%, specificity= 93.3%). There is inverse and significant correlation between ejection fraction (EF) and three vessels disease (P value ˂ 0.001, r= -0.507). Also there is a direct and significant correlation between C-IMT and severity of CAD. ROC analysis for validity of C-IMT to discriminate between multiple vessels disease and no vessel involvement is excellent (AUC= 0.961, cut point > 1.04mm, sensitivity=92.9%. specificity=86.7%). C-IMT is fair to discriminate between single vessel disease and no vessel involvement (AUC=0.738, cut point ˃ 0.84mm, sensitivity 100%), so if correlated with age, C-IMT above 0.84 can be used as a cut off point for the prediction of CAD. Finally, EFT and C-IMT are more likely to reflect severity of CAD than their ratio.
Conclusions: C-IMT and EFT are simple and reproducible parameters that can be used as a screening tool for the presence and severity of CAD especially before symptoms appearance in high risk patients
Breast cancer (BC) is the most common malignant tumor in women and the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. This work was conducted to estimate the roles of oxidative stress, vitamin B12, homocysteine (HCY), and DNA methylation in BC disease progression. Sixty BC patients (age range 33–80 years) and 30 healthy controls were recruited for this study. Patients with BC were split to group 1 consisted of stage II BC women (low level), and group 2 consisted of patients in stages III and IV (high level). Malondialdehyde (MDA), glutathione peroxidase 3 (GPX3), HCY, and vitamin B12 levels in the study groups were measured. Also, the 5-methylcytosine (5mC) global DNA methylation levels were evaluated. The results showed a significant
... Show MoreThe Spotlight Effect, defined as individuals' tendency to overestimate the extent to which others notice and evaluate them, has important implications for psychological functioning, social interaction, and performance in educational and sport environments. Despite previous studies have addressed the Spotlight Effect theoretically and empirically, no validated instrument has been specifically developed to assess this construct especially among students of Colleges of Physical Education and Sport Sciences. This study aimed to develop and validate a Spotlight Effect Scale and establishing normative levels for its interpretation. The descriptive survey approach was used, involving 555 students from Colleges of Physical Education and Spo
... Show MoreThe focus of this research revolves around the importance level of sialic acid in the reasoning of cases, including tumors and then evaluate the patient's response to treatment and its impact on the immune response there are a lot of evidence showing that parts Alkrbu ???????? in peptides sugary and glycoproteins play an important role in Alfalitin life and responsiveness
Background. Teaching quality in gymnastics is influenced by teachers' performance and attitudes, leading to increased functional creativity and psychological well-being. This, in turn, contributes to the success of the sports institution by enhancing the overall performance and overall well-being of the students. Objectives. The research aims to assess the psychological well-being and functional creativity of female gymnastics professors in Iraqi colleges of physical education and sports sciences, focusing on their level of well-being and the relationship between these factors. Methods. The researchers used a descriptive survey method to survey female gymnastics professors at 16 colleges in Iraq's physical education and sports science
... Show MoreBackground: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of thermo cycling and different pH of artificial saliva (neutral, acidic, basic) on impact and transverse strength of heat cure acrylic resin reinforced of with 5% silanated ZrO2 nano fillers. Materials and methods: 120 samples were prepared, 60 samples for impact strength test and another 60 samples for transverse strength test, for each test, samples were divided into two major groups (before and after thermo cycling), then each of these major groups were further subdivided into 3 subgroups according to the pH of prepared artificial saliva (neutral, acidic, basic). Charpy impact device was used for impact strength test and Flexural device was used for transverse strength test. R
... Show MoreBackground: Dental implant surface technologies have been evolving rapidly to enhance a more rapid bone formation on their surface and improve implant therapy.Implant threads should be designed to increase surface contact areathat induced better stability. In addition, implant surface coating with Flaxseed was used to enhance bone formation at the bone-implant interface. Materials and methods: Ninety-six commercially pure titanium (CpTi) screws were implanted in rabbits' tibiae and divided into three groups as dual-threaded group, flaxseed-coated group and control group. All groups were evaluated mechanically, histologically and radiographically after each healing periods (2, 4, 6 and 8) weeks and the resulting data were statistically analy
... Show MoreThe importance of forecasting has emerged in the economic field in order to achieve economic growth, as forecasting is one of the important topics in the analysis of time series, and accurate forecasting of time series is one of the most important challenges in which we seek to make the best decision. The aim of the research is to suggest the use of hybrid models for forecasting the daily crude oil prices as the hybrid model consists of integrating the linear component, which represents Box Jenkins models and the non-linear component, which represents one of the methods of artificial intelligence, which is long short term memory (LSTM) and the gated recurrent unit (GRU) which represents deep learning models. It was found that the proposed h
... Show MoreBackground: Indeterminate colitis (IC), a term
originated by pathologists to characterize confounding
histopathlogic appearance of resected mucosa, has
become catch phrase for cases in which diagnostic
criteria at all levels elude classification as Crohn's
disease (CD) or ulcerative colitis (UC).
OBJECTIVES: evaluate the prevalence of pANCA
expression in the sera and its isotypes.
Patients and methods: PATIENTS GROUP
consisted of 60 patients (40 males and 20 females)
with indeterminate colitis and their age range was (19-
84 years). CONTROL GROUP consisted of 30 (15
males and 15 females) healthy volunteers and their
age range was (20- 66 years).
Antineutrophil cytoplasmic ( pANCA and cANCA)
te
Rock engineers widely use the uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) of rocks in designing
surface and underground structures. The procedure for measuring this rock strength has been
standardized by both the International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM) and American Society
for Testing and Materials (ASTM), Akram and Bakar(2007).
In this paper, an experimental study was performed to correlate of Point Load Index ( Is(50))
and Pulse Wave Velocity (Vp) to the Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS) of Rocks. The effect
of several parameters was studied. Point load test, Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS) and
Pulse Wave Velocity (Vp) were used for testing several rock samples with different diameters.
The predicted e