Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a global public health problem. It is estimated that there are 240 million HBV carriers in the world, of whom roughly 600,000 die annually from HBV-related liver disease. A total of 150 individuals were included in this study, 130 individuals of them had hepatitis B infection (patients group); HBs-Ag was detected in their sera by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technique and was confirmed by real time PCR analysis to detect the viral genetic material, the others were control. Most of HBV patients in this study were located within 20-40 years group with a percentage of 47.7% and within the 40-60 years group with a percentage of 38.5%. Acute infection was confirmed by detection of anti-HBc IgM

chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common respiratory disease with episodes of exacerbation. Variable factors including infectious pathogen can predispose for this exacerbation. The aim of this study is to evaluate the role of intestinal protozoa in COPD exacerbation. A total of 56 patients with COPD were included in this study. Patients were categorized into two groups based on the frequency of exacerbation during the last 6 months: those with ≤1 exacerbation (32 patients) and those with ≥2 exacerbations (24 patients). Stool specimens from each patient were collected two times (one week interval) examined for intestinal parasite. In univariate analysis, rural residence and parasitic infection were more common among patie

According to so many previous studies, lack of sufficient information during prescribing steps may lead to medication errors. Thus, the presence of the clinical pharmacist during routine rounding process in the ward with intervention of patient care plan may reduce the probability of adverse drug events (ADEs).This study evaluate role of the clinical pharmacists, as a member of medical team with the physician, on ADEs and report their interventions in the internal medicine unit. This study was designed to compare between two groups of patients, those receiving care from a rounding team (physician, nurse, and clinical pharmacist) (study or intervention group with 51 patient); and those receiving c

Background: Axillary lymph node (ALN) enlargement with diffuse cortical thickening and conserved echogenic hilum may represent a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. Sonographic strain elastography may help the characterization of borderline ALN. 

Aim: To evaluate the strain elastography of borderline ALN and to calculate a cutoff value of strain ratio (SR) that can identify suspicious ALN with the highest sensitivity and specificity to reduce unnecessary invasive procedures. 

Subjects and Methods: A prospective study included 45 patients who attended the Breast clinic in Oncology Teaching Hospital with borderline axillary lymphadenopathy (intact hilum and diffusely thic

Background: Trauma is one of the most common
clinical problems that confront the maxillofacial
surgeon and radiologist alike. Middle third facial
fractures are diagnosed primarily on the bases of
clinical examination and plain radiographs than can
result in much preoperative speculation.
Objective: To assess the advantages of spiral
computerized tomography over conventional
radiography in the pre-surgical evaluation of middle
third facial fractures.
Methods: Thirty patients with thirty-eight facial
fractures were studied, all patients were examined
clinically, by plain radiography and then by spiral CT.
Results: Of the 38 middle-third fractures, 16
(42.1%) were zygomatic fractures, 8 (21.1%) were

Abstract:

                 The research aims to improve the insurance service through the marketing commission as a tool that enables the insurance companies to achieve a competitive advantage. The researcher, by observing the challenges faced by insurance companies, insurance agents and brokers, raised the main question of the research: Is there an effect of the marketing commission on the competitive advantage of insurance companies? The data was obtained through the financial statements and annual reports of the research sample companies (the National General Insurance Company, the Iraqi General Insurance Company, Al-Hamra Private

     Image texture is an important part of many types of images, for example medical images. Texture Analysis is the technique that uses measurable features to categorize complex textures. The main goal is to extract discriminative features that are used in different pattern recognition applications and texture categorization. This paper investigates the extraction of most discriminative features for different texture images from the “Colored Brodatz” dataset using two types of image contrast measures, as well as using the statistical moments on five bands (red, green, blue, grey, and black). The Euclidean distance measure is used in the matching step to check the similarity degree. The proposed method was tested on 112 classes o

Abstract The results of isolation, morphological and microscopic diagnosis, Chromic Agar, Vitik technology and Bact Alert showed that the diagnosis of fungi isolated from blood samples of end-stage renal patients who did not undergo dialysis and those who underwent dialysis was 60 samples for each type. The total number of fungal isolates isolated from people who did not undergo dialysis was 26 pathogenic fungal isolates, with a percentage frequency of 43.33%. In this study, 4 genera of pathogenic fungi were identified: Candida spp, Rhodotorula spp, Cryptococcus spp. and Aspergillus spp. The number of Candida isolates reached 13 isolates, with a frequency of 50%. The results also showed that the diagnosed species from the genus Rhodotorula