Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative disorder with various clinical types. Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) is significantly elevated in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of MS patients compared with that of healthy controls. The aim of this study is to evaluate serum levels of GFAP in relation to disease activity in relapsing-remitting MS patients and to compare them with those of healthy controls. Method: This study involved 58 MS patients of relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) type, 22 in an active stage of the disease and 36 in remission, and 50 healthy individuals as age- and sex-matched controls. Blood samples were taken from the patients at the MS Clinic of the Baghdad Teaching Hospital, and the serum levels of GFAP were determined using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technique. Results: Mean GFAP serum levels in 22 patients presenting in the active state of the disease (6.47±3.39 ng/ml) and 36 cases in remission were (5.33±2.82 ng/ml) (p=0.074) were determined as indicated. When RRMS patients (n=58) were compared with the healthy controls (n=50, 1.89±1.21), the difference in serum levels of GFAP was statistically significant (p<0.001). The area under the curve of the serum measures of GFAP obtained through the receiver operating characteristics was 0.903, which was also statistically significant (p<0.001). Conclusion: GFAP biomarker is an indicator of disease activity in RRMS patients, and its serum level may correlate with the state of remission or exacerbation.
Background: The demand for esthetic orthodontic appliances is increasing; so the esthetic orthodontic archwires were introduced. Among them, Teflon and Epoxy coated stainless steel archwires. The amount of force available from the archwire depends on the structural properties and susceptibility to corrosion. All metallic alloys are changed during immersion in artificial saliva, chlorhexidine mouthwash andtoothpaste, but their behaviors differ from one type to another. They corrode at different rates, which lead to decrease the amount of force applied to the teeth. This in vitro study was designed to evaluate the corrosion pits in stainless steel archwires coated with Teflon and with Epoxy in dry and after immersion in artificial saliva, chl
... Show MoreInfrared photoconductive detectors working in the far-infrared region and room temperature were fabricated. The detectors were fabricated using three types of carbon nanotubes (CNTs); MWCNTs, COOH-MWCNTs, and short-MWCNTs. The carbon nontubes suspension is deposited by dip coating and drop–casting techniques to prepare thin films of CNTs. These films were deposited on porous silicon (PSi) substrates of n-type Si. The I-V characteristics and the figures of merit of the fabricated detectors were measured at a forward bias voltage of 3 and 5 volts as well as at dark and under illumination by IR radiation from a CO2 laser of 10.6 μm wavelengths and power of 2.2 W. The responsivity and figures of merit of the photoconductive detector
... Show MoreBackground: Ultrasonography has been used to examine the thickness of the lower uterine segment in women with previous cesarean sections in an attempt to predict the risk of scar dehiscence during subsequent pregnancy. The predictive value of such measurement has not been adequately assessed. Objectives: To correlate lower uterine segment thickness measured by trans abdominal ultrasound in pregnant women with previous cesarean section with that measured during cesarean section by caliper and to find out minimum lower uterine segment thickness indicative of integrity of the scar.Methods: A prospective observational study at Elwyia Maternity Teaching Hospital, from January 2011 to January 2012. A total of 143 women were enrolled in the stu
... Show MoreThis paper investigates the performance evaluation of two state feedback controllers, Pole Placement (PP) and Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR). The two controllers are designed for a Mass-Spring-Damper (MSD) system found in numerous applications to stabilize the MSD system performance and minimize the position tracking error of the system output. The state space model of the MSD system is first developed. Then, two meta-heuristic optimizations, Simulated Annealing (SA) optimization and Ant Colony (AC) optimization are utilized to optimize feedback gains matrix K of the PP and the weighting matrices Q and R of the LQR to make the MSD system reach stabilization and reduce the oscillation of the response. The Matlab softwar
... Show MoreThe adsorption behavior of Bismarck brown (BB) dye from aqueous solutions onto graphene oxide GO and graphene oxide-g-poly (n-butyl methacrylate-co-methacrylic acid) GO-g-pBCM as adsorbents was investigated. The prepared GO and GO-g-pBCM were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy FTIR, which confirmed the compositions of the prepared adsorbents. Adsorption of BB dye onto GO and GO-g-pBCM was explored in a series of batch experiments under various conditions. The data were examined utilizing Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. The Langmuir isotherm was seen as increasingly reasonable from the experimental information of dye on formulating adsorbents. Kinetic investigations showed that the experimental data were fitted ve
... Show MoreABSTRACT Backgrounds: Maxillary canine impaction is complicated and time consuming to treat, for being highly diverse in inclination and location; it may be a companied by root resorption of the neighboring teeth. CBCT has been used for its' diagnostic reliability in localization of impacted canine and revealing its' serious local complications. Objectives: Localization of maxillary impacted canine using cone beam computed tomography for assessment of angulation, distance from occlusal plane, alveolar width and proximity to adjacent teeth. Subjects and Methods: The study sample was 33 subjects 16 females and 17 males attended to Al-Wasitti general hospital in Baghdad city-Oral and maxillofacial radiology department for CBCT scan investigati
... Show MoreBackground: Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a condition characterized by an elevation of oxidative stress, which has been implicated in diabetic progression and its vascular complications. Aim: Assessing the impact of gliclazide modified release (MR) versus glimepiride on oxidative stress markers, glycemic indices, lipid profile, and estimated glomerular filtration rate in uncontrolled type 2 diabetic patients on metformin monotherapy. Methods: This was an observational comparative study conducted in Thi-Qar specialized diabetic, endocrine, and metabolism center. Sixty-six patients were randomized into two groups based on the addition of the sulfonylureas (SUs). Group 1 (33 patients) was on gliclazide MR, whereas Group 2 (33 patients)
... Show MoreIn aspect-based sentiment analysis ABSA, implicit aspects extraction is a fine-grained task aim for extracting the hidden aspect in the in-context meaning of the online reviews. Previous methods have shown that handcrafted rules interpolated in neural network architecture are a promising method for this task. In this work, we reduced the needs for the crafted rules that wastefully must be articulated for the new training domains or text data, instead proposing a new architecture relied on the multi-label neural learning. The key idea is to attain the semantic regularities of the explicit and implicit aspects using vectors of word embeddings and interpolate that as a front layer in the Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory Bi-LSTM. First, we
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