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
Error control schemes became a necessity in network-on-chip (NoC) to improve reliability as the on-chip interconnect errors increase with the continuous shrinking of geometry. Accordingly, many researchers are trying to present multi-bit error correction coding schemes that perform a high error correction capability with the simplest design possible to minimize area and power consumption. A recent work, Multi-bit Error Correcting Coding with Reduced Link Bandwidth (MECCRLB), showed a huge reduction in area and power consumption compared to a well-known scheme, namely, Hamming product code (HPC) with Type-II HARQ. Moreover, the authors showed that the proposed scheme can correct 11 random errors which is considered a high
... Show MoreIn this work magnetite/geopolymer composite (MGP) were synthesized using a chemical co-precipitation technique. The synthesized materials were characterized using several techniques such as: “X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), vibrating sample-magnetometer (VSM), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) and Barrentt-Joyner-Halenda (BJH)” to determine the structure and morphology of the obtained material. The analysis indicated that metal oxide predominantly appeared at the shape of the spinel structure of magnetite, and that the presence of nano-magnetite had a substantial impact on the surface area and pore st
... Show MoreAn experimental and numerical investigation of the effect of using two types of nanofluids with suspending of (Al2O3 and CuO) nanoparticles in deionized water with a volume fraction of (0.1% vol.), in addition to use three types of fin plate configurations of (smooth, perforated, and dimple plate) to study the heat transfer enhancement characteristics of commercial fin plate heat sink for cooling computer processing unit. All experimental tests under simulated conditions by using heat flux heater element with input power range of (5, 16, 35, 70, and 100 W). The experimental parameters calculated are such as water and nanofluid as coolant with Reynolds number of (7000, 8000, 9400 and 11300); the air
... Show MoreThe current study deals with the performance of constructed wetland (CW) incorporating a microbial fuel cell (MFC) for wastewater treatment and electricity generation. The whole unit is referred to as CW-MFC. This technique involves two treatments; the first is an aerobic treatment which occurs in the upper layer of the system (cathode section) and the second is anaerobic biological treatment in the lower layer of the system (anode section). Two types of electrode material were tested; stainless steel and graphite. Three configurations for electrodes arrangement CW-MFC were used. In the first unit of CW-MFC, the anode was graphite plate (GPa) and cathode was also graphite plate (GPc), in the second CW-MFC unit, the anode was stainless st
... Show MoreAlpha shape theory for 3D visualization and volumetric measurement of brain tumor progression using magnetic resonance images
This investigation pertains to the evaluation of water quality in SAWA Lake, located in the Al-Muthanna province of Southern Iraq, from 1977 to 2020. Understanding the water quality and assessments of this Lake is of great importance. The Lake is home to small, transparent, blind fish measuring approximately 10 cm and is often referred to as the "wonderful" or "strange" Lake due to its many unique features. The study focuses on several elements to represent water quality, including total dissolved solids (TDS), electrical conductivity (EC), pH, and temperature (T), which were measured directly in the field. Additionally, scientific concepts such as K+, Ca2+, Cl-, HCO
The Iraqi economy has suffered for a long period of inflation because of the Iraq war and the resolutions and the sanctions that were imposed on Iraq, this phenomenon overshadowed at various aspects of the economy including the tax revenue that the State seeks to optimize the total income for the budget, the research covers the years 1990-2010, these years have been divided according to the country's economic variables.
The research adopted on econometrics analysis that is based on the information and data available on topics and has been using statistical methods to test functions are formulated.
Research concluded that rates of inflation and GDP impact is limited to direct taxation and indirect in current prices a
... Show MoreThe present work aimed to study the efficiency of nanofiltration (NF) and reverseosmosis (RO) process for water recovery from electroplating wastewater and study the factors affecting the performance of two membrane processes. Nanofiltration and reverse osmosismembranes are made from polyamide as spiral wound module. The inorganic materials ZnCl 2 CuCl2 .2H2O, NiCl.2.6H2O and CrCl3.6H2O were used as feed solutions. The operating parametersstudied were: operating time, feed concentrations for heavy metal ions, operating pressure, feed flow rate, feed temperature and feed pH. The experimental results showed, the permeateconcentration increased and water flux decreased with increase in time from 0 to 70 min. Thepermeate concentrations incre
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Magnetic abrasive finishing (MAF) is one of the advanced finishing processes, which produces a high level of surface quality and is primarily controlled by a magnetic field. This paper study the effect of the magnetic abrasive finishing system on the material removal rate (MRR) and surface roughness (Ra) in terms of magnetic abrasive finishing system for eight of input parameters, and three levels according to Taguchi array (L27) and using the regression model to analysis the output (results). These parameters are the (Poles geometry angle, Gap between the two magnetic poles, Grain size powder, Doze of the ferromagnetic abrasive powder, DC current, Workpiece velocity, Magnetic poles velocity, and Finishi
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