Background: Opportunistic viral infections make an important threat to renal transplantation recipients (RTRs), and with the use of more intense newly-developed immunosuppressive drugs; the risk of renal allograft loss due to reactivation of these viruses has increased considerably. At the top priority of these viruses lie BK polyomavirus (BKV) and human cytomegalovirus (CMV). Reactivation of these viruses in these chronically immunosuppressed RTRs can lead to renal impairment and subsequently allograft loss, unless early detected and properly treated. Objectives: The study aimed to detect and quantify plasma viral load of BKV and CMV in RTRs using quantitative real time PCR (qRT-PCR), in order to study the prevalence of these two viruses in the sole renal transplantation center in Baghdad, and correlate viral load with the diseases severity. Furthermore, the prevalence of BKV-CMV coexistence in RTRs, to find out whether infection by one of them is a risk factor for infection by the other was investigated. Patients and Methods:A total of 99 RTR were enrolled in the study, and 15 non-transplanted patients with chronic kidney diseases (CKD) together with 15 health living donors (LD) were taken as controls. Plasma samples were taken from all participants. From which viral DNA was extracted, and then real time PCR technique was used to measure the viral load. Results:Out of 99, 12 (12.12%) of RTR patients were positive for BK viremia with a viral load (VL) ranging from (1x102 to 1x109 copies/ml), while none of the control groups was BK positive, and 5 patients out of these 12 had BKV nephropathy. For CMV, 13.13% of RTR patients had positive CMV viremia with a VL ranging from (1.25x102 to 7.94x107 copies/ml), and only one of the CKD controls was CMV positive. Only 3 patients had BK-CMV coexistence, which was statistically not a significant risk factor for one another. Conclusion: Our study suggests that both BK polyomavirus and CMV should be considered important causes for nephropathy and allograft loss in RTRs in Iraq.
A case-control study was designed to find out the association between rs2234671 polymorphism of cxcr1 and rUTI in a sample of Iraqi women by polymerase chain reaction- sequence-specific primer (PCR-SSP) method. The current findings revealed that the genotype GC (OR= 7.86, 95% CI = 2.82-21.87, P= 7.7 × 10-5) and the C allele (OR= 3.93, 95% CI = 1.97 - 7.83, P = 9.8×10-5) are significantly associated with rUTI. However, the genotype GG played as a protective factor (OR= 0.12, 95% CI = 10.05 - 0.34, P = 4.0 ×10-5). Depending on these findings, the genotype GC is significantly associated with rUTI.
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Background: Diabetes mellitus is a well
known metabolic and vascular illness associated
with high incidence of bacterial urinary tract
infections especially in diabetic complications
including both micro and macro-vascular types.
Objective: To study the incidence of bacterial
urinary tract infections in type 2 diabetic
patients, the type of micro-organism responsible
in relation to age, sex of patients, duration of the
disease & related micro & macrovascular
diabetic complications.
Methods: A prospective study of the diabetic
patients including 40 males with mean age of
54(±9) years and 50 females, mean age of 51(±7)
years and duration of the and sex matched
controls (27 males and 33
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Infection at the site of vascular anastomosis is a serious complication of vascular surgery and is associated with a high limb loss and mortality rate. The classical method of management is ligation of the injured artery, adequate wound debridement and restoration of circulation. The latter is achieved by either in situ or extra-anatomic bypass. If the distal circulation is not maintained, subsequent amputation is most likely.
Objectives: In this study we tried to assess the efficacy of extra-anatomic synthetic bypass grafts in the treatment of vascular infection in the groin to save the limb and avoid the inevitable amputation.
Methods: Between January 2006 and December 2007, ten male patients aged twenty to thirty five years (mea
This article proposes a new strategy based on a hybrid method that combines the gravitational search algorithm (GSA) with the bat algorithm (BAT) to solve a single-objective optimization problem. It first runs GSA, followed by BAT as the second step. The proposed approach relies on a parameter between 0 and 1 to address the problem of falling into local research because the lack of a local search mechanism increases intensity search, whereas diversity remains high and easily falls into the local optimum. The improvement is equivalent to the speed of the original BAT. Access speed is increased for the best solution. All solutions in the population are updated before the end of the operation of the proposed algorithm. The diversification f
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Expansive soils are recognized by their swelling potential upon wetting due to the existence of some clay minerals such as montmorillonite. An effective solution was found to avoid the danger of such soils by using piles. A single pile embedded in an elasto-plastic expansive soil has been analyzed by using one of the available software which is ABAQUS to investigate the effect of applied loads on pile’s top and investigate the effect of swelling soils on load carrying capacity of the pile. The result shows that as the pile is axially loaded at its top, the axial force along the pile gradually changes from (tension) to (compression) and the pile tends to move downward. The applied load needed to initiate pile’s settlement depend
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The study aimed to evaluate the benefits of transferrin saturation percentage (TSAT) and serum ferritin in assessing body iron status, which can influence erythropoietin treatment in patients with ESRD. Forty end-stage renal disease patients on regular hemodialysis participated in this study. Clinical data were obtained. Serum iron, total iron binding capacity, transferrin saturation, ferritin, albumin, creatinine, and C-reactive protein were investigated. Thirty healthy people were enrolled as a control group. ESRD patients had a mean age of 45.1±13.9 years, with 60% being males. They exhibited significantly lower hematocrit (25.3±6.5%), and higher platelet (285.7±148.1x10^9/L) and WBC (9.4±3.1x10^9/L) counts compared to healthy contro
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