Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic and systemic autoimmune disease that is characterized by severe synovial inflammation, cartilage erosion, bone loss, and generalized vasculopathy. Although the immunologic mechanism of RA is still unclear, it is now thought to be a primarily Th17-driven disease. Along with other factors, IL-23 stimulates the expansion of Th17 cells from naive CD4+ T cells.

Objective: The objective of this study is to assess the circulating levels of interleukin (IL)-23 in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and determine the correlation between plasma/serum IL-23 levels and disease activity. So, we performed a systematic review with meta-analysis comparing

The neutrophil/ lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR) have the potential to be inflammatory markers that reflect the activity of many inflammatory diseases. The aim of this study was to evaluate the NLR and PLR as potential markers of disease activity in patients with ankylosing spondylitis.

The current study was designed to evaluate the anti-inflammatory effect of GKB in the rat model of granulomatous inflammation. Thirty rats were distributed into five groups:  The first group served as negative control group that received distilled water (DW) only without inducting inflammation, positive control group; treated with DW with the induction of inflammation and they were assigned to cotton pellet-induced granuloma, ginkgo biloba (GKB) treated group (200mg/kg/day), dexamethasone-treated group (1mg/kg), and Prednisolone treated group (5mg/kg). All the treatments were given orally for seven consecutive days.  On day eight, the rats were anesthetized and the pellets together with granulation tissue were carefully removed

Methotrexate (MTX) is widely used chemotherapeutic agent with different side effects including germ cells toxicities. Silibinin is one of the structural isomers of silymarin, with different phytotherapeutic applications, and its possible protective effects against MTX induced germ cells damage were investigated in this work. Twenty five male mice were divided into five groups (n=5) allocated as follows: Group 1 received buffer for five days given by single intraperitoneal (IP) injection per day; Group 2 in addition to buffer for five days, animals received at day five single dose of 20mg/kg of MTX IP. Groups (3, 4, and 5) received respectively, (50, 100, or 150mg/kg body weight) of silibinin IP single daily dose for five days then at day fi

This experiment was carried out at the Field of Poultry, Department of Animal Resources, College of Agriculture, University of Baghdad, during the period from 1/5/2011 until 5/7/2011 to study the effect of adding arginine to laying hens diet on certain blood traits. A total of 100 Brown Lohmann laying hen chickens, 38 weeks of age, were randomly distributed into four treatment groups, with 25 hens for each treatment. Treatment groups were: T1: bird-fed diet with no additional arginine (control group); T2, T3, and T4: bird-fed diet supplemented with 0.4, 0.7, and 0.9%, respectively. Therefore, the total amounts of arginine in the four treatments (T1, T2, T3, and T4) become 1.1, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0%, respectively. Results of this experiment rev

This study investigates the improvement of Iraqi atmospheric gas oil characteristics which contains 1.402 wt. % sulfur content and 16.88 wt. % aromatic content supplied from Al-Dura Refinery by using hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process using Ti-Ni-Mo/γ-Al₂O₃ prepared catalyst in order to achieve low sulfur and aromatic saturation gas oil. Hydrodearomatization (HDA) occurs simultaneously with hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process. The effect of titanium on the conventional catalyst Ni-Mo/γ-Al₂O₃ was investigated by physical adsorption and catalytic activity test.Ti-Ni-Mo/γ-Al₂O₃ catalyst was prepared under vacuum impregnation condition to ensure efficient pr

This study investigates the improvement of Iraqi atmospheric gas oil characteristics which contains 1.402 wt. % sulfur content and 16.88 wt. % aromatic content supplied from Al-Dura Refinery by using hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process using Ti-Ni-Mo/γ-Al2O3 prepared catalyst in order to achieve low sulfur and aromatic saturation gas oil. Hydrodearomatization (HDA) occurs simultaneously with hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process. The effect of titanium on the conventional catalyst Ni-Mo/γ-Al2O3 was investigated by physical adsorption and catalytic activity test. Ti-Ni-Mo/γ-Al2O3 catalyst was prepared under vacuum impregnation condition to ensure efficient precipitation of metals within the carrier γ-Al2O3. The loading percentage of met

In this work, the effect of the addition of bright nickel plating and silver carried out by the electroplating method has been studied, on the coating of copper nanoparticles on the copper base metal via the process of thermal evaporation. The improvement of the solar absorber using CuNP in combination with the bright nickel and silver was obtained to be better than copper nanoparticles individually. A bright nickel enhanced the absorbed thermal stability. Also, other optical properties, absorptions, and emissivity slightly decreased from (93% to 87%), while the existence of silver had a slight impact on absorption of about (86.50%). On the other hand, thermal conductivity was evaluated using hot disk analyzer. The results showed a good