MRSA is one of the major pathogens in hospitals and the community, which have the ability to produce biofilm as a virulence factor, the impact of chalcone on biofilm formation, the synergism effect of chalcone and antibiotic in both in vitro and in vivo experiments, the gene expression of virulence genes (srtA, fnbA, fnbB) before and after treatment of it on MRSA biofilm cells in vitro, all these were the prime aims of this study. Chalcone at MBIC (20 μg/ml), significantly reduced the biofilm formation to 21.45% and at sub MBIC (15 μg/ml) to 36.58 %. While, Chalcone at MIC(5 μg/ml) reduced MRSA planktonic cells to 49.61%. Susceptibility of MRSA isolates against eight antibiotics showed that all isolates were sensitive to vancomycin and none of the isolates developed susceptibility to erythromycin. The combinatorial effect of chalcone at 5 μg/ml and vancomycin at MIC of (1 μg/ml) on MRSA planktonic cells was reduced it from 70 to 23.3% , and in combination with erythromycin at 32 μg/ml, was decreased from 53.1% to 22% and the effect of chalcone at sub MBIC (15 μg/ml) when combined with vancomycin was reducing the biofilm formation from 87% to 27.6 and with erythromycin from 55.1% to 23.8%. Combinatorial phenotypic effect of the antibiotics and chalcone (at sub MBIC), in vitro came in line with the result of in vivo experiment and the results showed decrease in the expression of fnbA, fnbB and srtA genes in tested isolates in the presence of chalcone at sub MBIC. In our study, we demonstrated that chalcone exhibited significant effect in biofilm formation of MRSA strains, which can be considered as promising antimicrobial agents that can be used for prevention of MRSA adherence or as adjunct to antibiotics in conventional therapy.
ABSTRACTBackground: In Medical ethics education, improving medical student’s attitudes toward respecting the right of patients is an essential task. The medical students’ attitude has been affected by social, educational and personality background factors.Objective: To investigate medical student’s attitudes regarding medical ethics courses.Method: The study was conducted in Al-Kindy College of Medicine on academic year (2013 -2014) for the period from January to September. A cross- sectional study design was adopted with a self- administered questionnaire form distributed to medical students in the 5th-6th under graduate grades. The questionnaire consisted of 31 items relevant to student’s opinion about attitudes concerning ethi
... Show MoreThis paper proposes two hybrid feature subset selection approaches based on the combination (union or intersection) of both supervised and unsupervised filter approaches before using a wrapper, aiming to obtain low-dimensional features with high accuracy and interpretability and low time consumption. Experiments with the proposed hybrid approaches have been conducted on seven high-dimensional feature datasets. The classifiers adopted are support vector machine (SVM), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and K-nearest neighbour (KNN). Experimental results have demonstrated the advantages and usefulness of the proposed methods in feature subset selection in high-dimensional space in terms of the number of selected features and time spe
... Show MoreThis paper presents a comparative study between different oil production enhancement scenarios in the Saadi tight oil reservoir located in the Halfaya Iraqi oil field. The reservoir exhibits poor petrophysical characteristics, including medium pore size, low permeability (reaching zero in some areas), and high porosity of up to 25%. Previous stimulation techniques such as acid fracturing and matrix acidizing have yielded low oil production in this reservoir. Therefore, the feasibility of hydraulic fracturing stimulation and/or horizontal well drilling scenarios was assessed to increase the production rate. While horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing can improve well performance, they come with high costs, often accounting for up t
... Show MoreThe syntheses, characterization and experimental solid state X-ray structures of five low-spin paramagnetic 2-pyridyl-(1,2,3)-triazole-copper compounds, [Cu(Ln)2Cl2], are presented in this study, for the following five Ln ligands: L1 = 2-(1-(p-tolyl)-1H-(1,2,3-triazol-4-yl)pyridine), L2 = 2-(1-(4- chlorophenyl)-1H-(1,2,3-triazol-4-yl)pyridine), L3 = 4-(4-(pyridin-2-yl)-1H-(1,2,3-triazol-4-yl)benzonitril), L4 = 2-(1-phenyl-1H-(1,2,3-triazol-4-yl)pyridine) and L5 = 2-(1-(4-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl)-1H-(1,2,3- triazol-4-yl)pyridine). These five [Cu(Ln)2Cl2] complexes each contain two bidentate 2-pyridyl-(1,2,3)- triazole (Ln) and two chloride ions as ligands, with the Cu–N(pyridine) bonds, Cu–N(triazole) and Cu–Cl bonds trans to each othe
... Show MoreThe covid-19 pandemic sweeping the world and has rendered a large proportion of the workforce as they are unable to commute to work. This has resulted in employees and employers seeking alternative work arrangements, including the software industry. Then comes the need for the global market and international presence of many companies to implement the global virtual teams (GVTs). GVTs members are gradually engaged in globalized business environments across space, time and organizational boundaries via information and communication technologies. Despite the advancement of technology, the project managers are still facing many challenges in communication. Hense, to become a successful project manager still a big challenge for them. This study
... Show MoreMany therapeutic methods used to encourage reparative processes of cartilage and accelerate their healing such as drugs, magneto-laser and so on. Twenty four adult New Zealand rabbits used in this study. They were divided in to two groups; control and treaded with He –Ne laser. A square skin flap done on the medial aspect of both auricles followed by pealing a square piece of cartilage from the auricle then the flaps sutured .The site of the operation in the rabbits of the treated group were irradiated with He –Ne laser 5mw power for seven days began after the operation directly. 3 rabbits from each group used for collection of specimens for histopathological examination at the 1, 2, 4 & 6 weeks post the operation. Significant
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