Background: Legionella pneumophila (L. pneumophila) is gram-negative bacterium, which causes Legionnaires’ disease as well as Pontiac fever. Objective: To determine the frequency of Legionella pneumophila in pneumonic patients, to determine the clinical utility of diagnosing Legionella pneumonia by urinary antigen testing (LPUAT) in terms of sensitivity and specificity, to compares the results obtained from patients by urinary antigen test with q Real Time PCR (RT PCR) using serum samples and to determine the frequency of serogroup 1 and other serogroups of L. pneumophila. Methods: A total of 100 pneumonic patients (community acquired pneumonia) were enrolled in this study during a period between October 2016 to April 2017; 92 samples were collected from patients attended and admitted to Al-Imamein Al-Kadhimein Medical City and 8 samples from those in the (Center of Kidney Diseases and Transplantation) in the Medical City of Baghdad. All patients were under therapy with antibiotics. Serum and urine specimens were obtained from all patients; urine samples were processed for urinary antigen test (rapid test). Serum samples were collected and submitted to DNA extraction for detection of L. pneumophila mip gene by q RT PCR assay. Results: The percentage of L. pneumophila in two hospitals in Bagdad was 30%. Of these 26% was serogroup 1 detected by urinary antigen testing (UAT). In the other hand, 23% of samples were positive by q RT PCR based mip gene, of these 19 % were serogroup 1 and 4% were another serogroup. The sensitivity of UAT is high (P value < 0.001), which means statistically highly significance than q RT PCR. Conclusion: LPUAT is a rapid tool for early diagnosis of Legionella infection, which highlights the need of using this test in hospitals and health institutions and there is a high prevalence of L. pneumophila in Iraq that refer to the necessity of considering this microorganism point of view in future studies for detection and treatment in pneumonic patients. Keywords: L. pneumophila, mip gene, quantitative real time PCR, urinary antigen. Citation: Gauad SA, Abdulrahman TR, Muhamad AK, Jawad AA, Hassan JS. Clinical utility of urinary antigen test and molecular method for detection of Legionella pneumophila. Iraqi JMS. 2018; 16(2): 207-215. doi: 10.22578/IJMS.16.2.13
Fluorescent proteins (FPs) have revolutionised the life sciences, but the chromophore maturation mechanism is still not fully understood. Here we photochemically trap maturation at a crucial stage and structurally characterise the intermediate.
The application of low order panel method with the Dirichlet boundary condition on complex aircraft configuration have been studied in high subsonic and transonic speeds. Low order panel method has been used to solve the case of the steady, inviscid and compressible flow on a forward swept wing – canard configuration with cylindrical fuselage and a vertical stabilizer with symmetrical cross section. The aerodynamic coefficients for the forward swept wing aircraft were calculated using measured wake shape from an experimental work on same model configuration. The study showed that the application of low order panel method can be used with acceptable results
Iron oxide(Fe3O4) nanoparticles of different sizes and shapes were synthesized by solve-hydrothermal reaction assisted by microwave irradiation using ferrous ammonium sulfate as a metal precursor, oleic acid as dispersing agent, ethanol as reducing agent and NaOH as precipitating agent at pH=12. The synthesized Fe3O4 nano particles were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), FTIR and thermal analysis TG-DTG. Sizes and shapes of Fe3O4 nanoparticles were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM).
Achieving reliable operation under the influence of deep-submicrometer noise sources including crosstalk noise at low voltage operation is a major challenge for network on chip links. In this paper, we propose a coding scheme that simultaneously addresses crosstalk effects on signal delay and detects up to seven random errors through wire duplication and simple parity checks calculated over the rows and columns of the two-dimensional data. This high error detection capability enables the reduction of operating voltage on the wire leading to energy saving. The results show that the proposed scheme reduces the energy consumption up to 53% as compared to other schemes at iso-reliability performance despite the increase in the overhead number o
... Show MoreThis project sought to fabricate a flexible gas sensor based on a short functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (f-MWCNTs) network for nitrogen dioxide gas detection. The network was prepared by filtration from the suspension (FFS) method and modified by coating with a layer of polypyrrole conductive polymer (PPy) prepared by the oxidative chemical polymerization to improve the properties of the network. The structural, optical, and morphological properties of the f-MWCNTs and f-MWCNTs/PPy network were studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourie-transform infrared (FTIR), with an AFM (atomic force microscopy). XRD proved that the structure of f-MWCNTs is unaffected by the synthesis procedure. The FTIR spectra verified the existence o
... Show MoreWater supply networks are marred by serious risks of imperceptible pipeline leakage, posing sustainability and performance threats. This article highlights the use of vibratory signal features to get around the drawbacks of traditional methods in a highly detailed framework for leak detection based on CatBoost. demonstrated excellent diagnostic performance and carried out a thorough test performance evaluation on five leakage configurations . The expected system achieved an accuracy of 98.1% (variance (well within x/3% of expected):, beating traditional competitors such as Random Forest (97.3%) and Support Vector Machine (93.8%). For example, the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve was 0.995, in
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