Background: The discriminative power of the classical WHO parameters in relation to male fertility is quite low, because they only address few aspects of sperm quality and function. This has led investigators to focus their attention on the male gamete and in particular its genome.Objective: To explore which of the sperm DNA damage parameters measured by comet assay are more reliable, and their relations with the standard semen parameters.Methods: Study was done on 40 infertile men selected from couples attending the Institute of Embryo Reasearch and Infertility Treatment at Al-Kadhimiya City/ Baghdad in the period between February 2009 and May 2009, with a history of infertility of ≥1 years; and 15 healthy volunteers of proven fertility serving as control. Samples were allowed to liquefy for at least 30 minutes at 37°C and then evaluated according to the guidelines of the World Health Organization, 1999. The single cell gel electrophoresis (comet) assay was studied in the ejaculated spermatozoa. The exclusion criteria were the presence of azoospermia and severe oligospermia. Results were compared with the standard semen characteristics (concentration, motility and morphology).Results: Compared to healthy volunteers, infertile patients had highly significantly higher values of comet parameters (P = 0.00001). In all infertile patients, comet extent did not correlate with any of the classical semen parameters; whereas, tail length (μm), % DNA in tail, tail moment and olive moment had all significant negative correlations with the standard parameters. Significant positive correlations were observed between the studied comet parameters, except for the comet extent which was not significantly correlated with tail length and % DNA in tail (P = 0.06, P = 0.7; respectively).Conclusion: Comet assay is a very useful technique in assessing sperm DNA damage. Comet tail parameters and comet extent, may clarify different aspects of DNA damage, and together give a better insight to the integrity of the male genome.Keywards: sperm, comet extent, % DNA in tail, tail moment and olive moment
Background: Breast lump is one of the most common prevalent complaint of patients attending breast clinics.
Objective: To determine if there is any change in the pattern of common breast, diseases presenting as breast lumps between pregnant and non-pregnant women among patients attending Al-Elwiya Breast Clinic.
Methods: This is a cross – sectional study, with convent's patient sampling setting in AL-Elwiya Breast Cancer Early Detection Clinic from 1st Feb. to 1st May 2018, we collected data from patients with breast lumps including the age groups, pregnancy status, parity status, previous breast diseases, hormonal drugs, menstrual cycle, breast fe
... Show MoreIn this paper, the maximum likelihood estimator and the Bayes estimator of the reliability function for negative exponential distribution has been derived, then a Monte –Carlo simulation technique was employed to compare the performance of such estimators. The integral mean square error (IMSE) was used as a criterion for this comparison. The simulation results displayed that the Bayes estimator performed better than the maximum likelihood estimator for different samples sizes.
Background: Ankylosing spondylitis is a chronic inflammatory disease that mostly involves the spine and sacroiliac joints. It is associated with a decreased quality of life. Biological medicines such as infliximab and its biosimilar are the mainstay treatments for active ankylosing spondylitis.
Objective: The study objective was to conduct a pharmacoeconomic study comparing the cost-effectiveness of the reference infliximab with its biosimilar in ankylosing spondylitis patients visiting public hospitals.
Subjects and Method: This is a two-center pharmacoeconomic study performed at two large teaching governmental hospitals in Baghdad, Iraq, which s
... Show MoreThe current study was carried out to find out the relationship between the Above-Ground Biomass and the spectral vegetative indices (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index, Difference Vegetation Index) (NDVI, SAVI, DVI) for soils with different salinity levels. Al Salamiyat Project was chosen as a study area located at an altitude of 34 m above sea level and within the geographical coordinates (E 44°.09´13.65´´ N 33°.25´ 07.87´´ and E 44°.17´ 46.03´´ N 33°.2l´40.72´´), with a total area of 14265 Dunum. Surface and subsurface soil samples were chosen from the study area and according to the previously defined salinity units, except for th
Until recently, researchers have utilized and applied various techniques for intrusion detection system (IDS), including DNA encoding and clustering that are widely used for this purpose. In addition to the other two major techniques for detection are anomaly and misuse detection, where anomaly detection is done based on user behavior, while misuse detection is done based on known attacks signatures. However, both techniques have some drawbacks, such as a high false alarm rate. Therefore, hybrid IDS takes advantage of combining the strength of both techniques to overcome their limitations. In this paper, a hybrid IDS is proposed based on the DNA encoding and clustering method. The proposed DNA encoding is done based on the UNSW-NB15
... Show MoreRecent research has shown that a Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) has ability to be used to discover diseases in human body as its function can be used for an intrusion-detection system (IDS) to detect attacks against computer system and networks traffics. Three main factor influenced the accuracy of IDS based on DNA sequence, which is DNA encoding method, STR keys and classification method to classify the correctness of proposed method. The pioneer idea on attempt a DNA sequence for intrusion detection system is using a normal signature sequence with alignment threshold value, later used DNA encoding based cryptography, however the detection rate result is very low. Since the network traffic consists of 41 attributes, therefore we proposed the
... Show MoreBackground: The transcriptional control of various cell types, especially in the development or functioning of immune system cells involved in either promoting or inhibiting the immune response against cancer, is significantly influenced by DNA or RNA methylation. Multifaceted interconnections exist between immunological or cancer cell populations in the tumor's microenvironment (TME). TME alters the fluctuating DNA (as well as RNA) methylation sequences in these immunological cells to change their development into pro- or anti-cancer cell categories (such as T cells, which are regulatory, for instance). Objective: This review highlights the impact of DNA and RNA methylation on myeloid and lymphoid cells, unraveling their intricate
... Show MoreMultiple linear regressions are concerned with studying and analyzing the relationship between the dependent variable and a set of explanatory variables. From this relationship the values of variables are predicted. In this paper the multiple linear regression model and three covariates were studied in the presence of the problem of auto-correlation of errors when the random error distributed the distribution of exponential. Three methods were compared (general least squares, M robust, and Laplace robust method). We have employed the simulation studies and calculated the statistical standard mean squares error with sample sizes (15, 30, 60, 100). Further we applied the best method on the real experiment data representing the varieties of
... Show MoreBackground: With the increased in the demands of adult orthodontics, the challenge of direct bonding to non-enamel surface (zirconium) had been increased. The present study was carried out to compare the shear bond strength of three different brackets (stainless steel, sapphire and composite) bonded to zirconium surface and study the mode of bond failure. Materials and methods: The sample was comprised of 30 models (8mm *6mm*1.5mm) of full contour zirconium veneers. They were divided into three groups according to the brackets type; all samples were treated first by sandblast with aluminum oxide particle 50 µm then coated by z-prime plus primer. A central incisor bracket of each group was bonded to the prepared zirconium surface with lig
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