Background Osteoarthritis is a chronic degenerative disorder with rising prevalence. Early detection of structural damage is difficult. Consequently, there is a pressing demand for reliable biomarkers that enable an earlier diagnosis of osteoarthritis. The aim is to investigate the level of serum fibulin-3 in patients with primary knee osteoarthritis and its correlation with disease severity. Subjects and methods A case–control study was conducted at the Baqubah Teaching Hospital from November 2023 to January 2024. One hundred twenty persons participated in this study (eighty females with the diagnosis of knee osteoarthritis in its early and late stages, and forty age-matched, apparently healthy control. Serum fibulin-3, ESR, CRP, and calcium levels were measured for all participants. Ethical approval was obtained. SPSS was used for data analysis. Results Patients with osteoarthritis had considerably higher serum levels of fibulin-3. In patients with late-stage knee osteoarthritis, this rise was greater than in earlier stages. Serum fibulin and ESR are positively correlated. Fibulin’s area under the curve is 0.830 for diagnosis and 0.709 for differentiating between osteoarthritis’s early and late stages. Conclusion Serum levels of fibulin-3 can act as diagnostic markers for OA and may be useful in determining the severity of knee osteoarthritis.
Micro-perforated panel (MPP) absorber is increasingly gaining popularity as an alternative sound absorber in buildings compared to the well-known synthetic porous materials. A single MPP has a typical feature of a Helmholtz resonator with a high amplitude of absorption but a narrow absorption frequency bandwidth. To improve the bandwidth, a single MPP can be cascaded with another single MPP to form a double-layer MPP. This paper proposes the introduction of inhomogeneous perforation in the double-layer MPP system (DL-iMPP) to enhance the absorption bandwidth of a double-layer MPP. Mathematical models are proposed using the equivalent electrical circuit model and are validated with experiments with good agreement. It is revealed that the DL-
... Show MoreDetection of early clinical keratoconus (KCN) is a challenging task, even for expert clinicians. In this study, we propose a deep learning (DL) model to address this challenge. We first used Xception and InceptionResNetV2 DL architectures to extract features from three different corneal maps collected from 1371 eyes examined in an eye clinic in Egypt. We then fused features using Xception and InceptionResNetV2 to detect subclinical forms of KCN more accurately and robustly. We obtained an area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) of 0.99 and an accuracy range of 97–100% to distinguish normal eyes from eyes with subclinical and established KCN. We further validated the model based on an independent dataset with
... Show MoreThis paper presents a computer simulation model of a thermally activated roof (TAR) to cool a room using cool water from a wet cooling tower. Modeling was achieved using a simplified 1-D resistance-capacitance thermal network (RC model) for an infinite slab. Heat transfer from the cooling pipe network was treated as 2-D heat flow. Only a limited number of nodes were required to obtain reliable results. The use of 6th order RC-thermal model produced a set of ordinary differential equations that were solved using MATLAB - R2012a. The computer program was written to cover all possible initial conditions, material properties, TAR system geometry and hourly solar radiation. The cool water supply was considered time
... Show MoreBackground: Hemophilia B is an X-linked recessive disorder caused by mutations in the F9 gene, causing bleeding tendency predominantly in males. The mutational spectrum of the F9 gene has not been adequately studied in Iraq. Objectives: To detect the disease-causing variants of exons 6, 7, and 8 and immediate introns of F9 gene using Sanger sequencing among Iraqi hemophilia B patients and to correlate them with phenotypes. Methods: Forty Iraqi hemophilia B patients were recruited for this cross-sectional study from The Hereditary Bleeding Disorder Ward in the Children Welfare Teaching Hospital, Medical City, Baghdad, between November 2021 and April 2022 using a consecutive sampling technique. Peripheral blood samples were used for sequencin
... Show MoreThis study includes the application of non-parametric methods in estimating the conditional survival function of the Beran method using both the Nadaraya-Waston and the Priestley-chao weights and using data for Interval censored and Right censored of breast cancer and two types of treatment, Chemotherapy and radiation therapy Considering age is continuous variable, through using (MATLAB) use of the (MSE) To compare weights The results showed a superior weight (Nadaraya-Waston) in estimating the survival function and condition of Both for chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
Objective: To evaluate nurses' practices toward coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) patients in the
intensive care units (ICU) and to find out the relationship with some vanables.
Methodology: A purposive sample of (50) staff nurses was selected out of three hospitals for cardiac surgery.
The study instmment consisted of two major sections was constructed. It is based on the review of literature.
First it is concerned with demographic data for nurses; and the second section is observationaL tool (checklist) is
composed of six parts in which there mere (78) items. Reliability and validity of the observational checklist were
determined through the analysis of a pilot study.
Data were collected through the use of the
Objectives: The study aims at finding the effectiveness of dietary habits on urolithiatic patients at Urinary Units
in Baghdad Teaching Hospitals.
Methodology: A quantitative descriptive study was conducted to identify the effectiveness of dietary habits on
(100) of urolithiatic patients in Urinary Units at Baghdad Teaching Hospitals starting from May 2011 to Sep.
2012.Data were collected through the use of constructed check list of the questionnaire format, which
consists of two parts: - The first part: is related to the patient's demographic variables ; the second part: is
constructed to serve the purpose of the study (effectiveness of the dietary habits). The total number of items
of the questionnaire is (69) item
Leishmania tropica is a species of flagellate parasites that infects humans and the cause of the disease cutaneous leishmaniasis, which is the most common form of leishmaniasis. It is one of the major parasites, which have high prevalence than other parasites in Iraq. The aim was to investigate the role of HLA alleles in susceptibility to cutaneous leishmaniasis infection in Baghdad in a sample of Iraqi patients. Cross sectional study (thirty Iraqi Arab Muslims patients with Leishmania tropica infection and thirty Iraqi Arab Muslims healthy persons) were participated in this study. Patients were consulted Department of Dermatology in Medical city Teaching hospital and AL Yarmook Teaching hospital for the period between March 2014 till May 2
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