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
Poly-ether-ether-ketone (PEEK) was introduced in dentistry as an alternative to metal alloys.
To assess the effectiveness of PEEK-fixed retainers in preserving the stability of mandibular anterior and participant satisfaction as compared to the Dead-soft coaxial fixed retainer (DSC).
A single-centre, two-arm parallel groups
Introduction: This study aimed to assess the color change of human teeth with artificial enamel white spot lesions (WSLs) after sandblasting with bioactive glass, resin infiltration, and microabrasion and to test color stability after pH cycling. Methods: Fifty extracted human mandibular first molars were randomly assigned into five groups: Sound, WSLs (untreated), and WSLs sandblasted with bioactive glass (Sylc), WSLs treated by resin infiltration (ICON), and WSLs treated by microabrasion (Opalustre), respectively. All specimens underwent a pH cycling procedure. The color parameters for each specimen were assessed using an Easyshade dental spectrophotometer at different time stages then the color changes (ΔE) were calculated. Results: The
... Show MoreKE Sharquie, AA Al-Nuaimy, WJ Kadhum, Saudi medical journal, 2006 - Cited by 3
Cantilever beams are used in many crucial applications in machinery and construction. For example, the airplane wing, the microscopic probe for atomic force measurement, the tower crane overhang and twin overhang folding bridge are typical examples of cantilever beams. The current research aims to develop an analytical solution for the free vibration problem of cantilever beams. The dynamic response of AISI 304 beam represented by the natural frequencies was determined under different working surrounding temperatures ((-100 ℃ to 400 ℃)). A Matlab code was developed to achieve the analytical solution results, considering the effect of some beam geometrical dimensions. The developed analytical solution has been verified successful
... Show MoreThe main aim of this paper is to study how the different estimators of the two unknown parameters (shape and scale parameter) of a generalized exponential distribution behave for different sample sizes and for different parameter values. In particular,
. Maximum Likelihood, Percentile and Ordinary Least Square estimators had been implemented for different sample sizes (small, medium, and large) and assumed several contrasts initial values for the two parameters. Two indicators of performance Mean Square Error and Mean Percentile Error were used and the comparisons were carried out between different methods of estimation by using monte carlo simulation technique .. It was obse
... Show MoreThis paper presents a fully computerized method to backup the router configuration file. The method consists of a friendly graphical interface programmed by Java programming language.
The proposed method is compared with the two existing methods, namely: TFTP server method and Copy/Paste method. The comparison reveals that the proposed method has many advantages over the existing ones. The proposed method has been implemented on Cisco routers (series 2500, 2600 and 2800).
The Assignment model is a mathematical model that aims to express a real problem facing factories and companies which is characterized by the guarantee of its activity in order to make the appropriate decision to get the best allocation of machines or jobs or workers on machines in order to increase efficiency or profits to the highest possible level or reduce costs or time To the extent possible, and in this research has been using the method of labeling to solve the problem of the fuzzy assignment of real data has been approved by the tire factory Diwaniya, where the data included two factors are the factors of efficiency and cost, and was solved manually by a number of iterations until reaching the optimization solution,
... Show MoreThe primary objective of this paper is to improve a biometric authentication and classification model using the ear as a distinct part of the face since it is unchanged with time and unaffected by facial expressions. The proposed model is a new scenario for enhancing ear recognition accuracy via modifying the AdaBoost algorithm to optimize adaptive learning. To overcome the limitation of image illumination, occlusion, and problems of image registration, the Scale-invariant feature transform technique was used to extract features. Various consecutive phases were used to improve classification accuracy. These phases are image acquisition, preprocessing, filtering, smoothing, and feature extraction. To assess the proposed
... Show MoreBackground: Background : Patients with non-rheumatic atrial fibrillation have high risk of thromboembolism especially ischemic stroke usually arising from left atrial appendage .Transoesophageal echocardiography provides useful information for risk stratification in these patients as it detects thrombus in the left atrial or left atrial appendage. Objective : This study was conducted at Al-Kadhimiya Teaching Hospital to assess the prevalence of left atrial chamber thrombi in patients with chronic non-rheumatic atrial fibrillation using transoesophageal echocardiography and its clinical significance as well as to verify the superiority of transoesophageal over transthoracic echocardiography in the detection of these abnormalities. Type of
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