Background: Cytokines produced by inflammatory cells play a pivotal role in synovial inflammation and joint destruction in rheumatoid arthritis.
Patients and Methods: The cytokine serum levels were measured by EASIA (Enzyme amplified sensitivity immunoassay) in sera from 50 RA patients, and 40 healthy donors. Cytokine levels were compared in different RA subpopulations (positive or negative rheumatoid factor (RF), long term or recent onset disease, high or low disease activity). In addition, the possible association with other demographic and clinical parameters (gender, age, etc) was also analyzed.
Results: It was demonstrated that IL-2, IL-6 and IFN-δ levels were elevated in serum samples of RA pati

Background: Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is a very common cause of multiple regional musculoskeletal (MSK) pain and disability; it is characterized by chronic widespread for at least
three months and tender points identified by the American Collage of Rheumatology (ACR).The cause of FMS is currently unknown. However, several hypotheses have been developed including genetic predisposition. This study aims to evaluate the contribution of serum lipid profile to the pathophysiology of FMS.
Patients & Methods: The study has included 160 patients with FMS with age range (18-72) years and 60 control individuals who were age and sex matching with FMS patients: 29 patients with chronic musculoskeletal compla

It is well known that monotherapy does not provide therapeutic response in all hypertensive. Somepatients show an excellent response, while in others there is a poor response. Combinationantihypertensive therapy is administered when blood pressure is inadequately controlled bymonotherapy to achieve a balanced and additive antihypertensive effect with minimum adverse effects.Both angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and dihydropyridine type of calcium antagonistsare well established and widely used in monotherapy. An understanding of differences in themechanism of action of these agents allows a logical approach for the use of these agents as acombination therapy. This study was designed to evaluate the possible beneficial

     This paper investigates the simultaneous recovery for two time-dependent coefficients for heat equation under Neumann boundary condition. This problem is considered under extra conditions of nonlocal type. The main issue with this problem is the solution unstable to small contamination of noise in the input data. The Crank-Nicolson finite difference method is utilized to solve the direct problem whilst the inverse problem is viewed as nonlinear optimization problem. The later problem is solved numerically using optimization toolbox from MATLAB. We found that the numerical results are accurate and stable.

      A model using the artificial neural networks and genetic algorithm technique is developed for obtaining optimum dimensions of the foundation length and protections of small hydraulic structures. The procedure involves optimizing an objective function comprising a weighted summation of the state variables. The decision variables considered in the optimization are the upstream and downstream cutoffs lengths and their angles of inclination, the foundation length, and the length of the downstream soil protection. These were obtained for a given maximum difference in head, depth of impervious layer and degree of anisotropy. The optimization carried out is subjected to constraints that ensure a safe structure aga

“Smart city” projects have become fully developed and are actively using video analytics. Our study looks at how video analytics from surveillance cameras can help manage urban areas, making the environment safer and residents happier. Every year hundreds of people fall on subway and railway lines. The causes of these accidents include crowding, fights, sudden health problems such as dizziness or heart attacks, as well as those who intentionally jump in front of trains. These accidents may not cause deaths, but they cause delays for tens of thousands of passengers. Sometimes passers-by have time to react to the event and try to prevent it, or contact station personnel, but computers can react faster in such situations by using ethical

priorities of materials research due to their promising properties, especially in the field of thermoelectricity. The efficiency or performance of thermoelectric devices is expressed in terms of the thermoelectric figure-of-merit (ZT) – a standard indicator of a material’s thermoelectric properties for use in cooling systems. The evaluation of ZT is principally determined by the thermoelectric characteristics of the nanomaterials. In this paper, a set of investigative computations was performed to study the thermoelectric properties of monolayer TMDCs according to the semiclassical treatment of the Boltzmann transport equation. It was confirmed that the thermoelectric properties of 2D materials can be greatly improved compared with thei

The pollution producing from textile industries effluents is growing since the years, due to at discharged lots of it in water without treatment. The resulting effluent is colourful, highly toxic, and poses a significant environmental hazard. This problem can be solved by using enzymic biological treatment, where the Congo red dye was used with concentrations (100,200,300,500) mg /L, pH values (3,4,5,6,7,8), and variable temperatures (25,35,45)°C, the best removal of Congo red (CR) dye  under optimum conditions for degradation was at  concentration of 100 mg/L, at (pH 6, 25 °C) with efficiency of 99.85 % using the peroxidase enzyme extracted from red radish plant, while the removal percentage decreased when increase dye concentration

The aim of this paper is to analyzed unsteady heat transfer for magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow of a second grade fluid in a channel with porous medium. The equations which was used to describe the flow are the momentum and energy, these equations were written to get thier non dimentional form. Homotopy analysis method (HAM) is employed to obtain a semi-analytical solutions for velocity and heat transfer fields. The effect of each dimensionless parameter upon the velocity and temperature distributions is analyzed and shown graphically by using MATHEMATICA package.