Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune diseasecharacterized by chronic inflammationthat affects joints and cartilage. Bone complications such asRA-relatedosteoporosis are one of the most extra-articular manifestations. Many inflammatory mediators are released during RA disease pathophysiology; these mediators stimulate osteoclast genesis of bone by direct effects on RANKL and OPG. The study aimedto measure RANKL, OPG in RA patients treated with Etanercept only and other groups treated with Methotrexate onlyat baseline and after three months to evaluate bone state. An observational case-control prospective study was done on 30 RA patients who received MTX, 30 RA patients who received ETN, and 30 healthy,age-matched control groups. The level of RANKL and OPG was measured at baseline and after three months of therapy by immunoenzymatically assay (ELISA). The results were tabulated and statistically analyzed usingthe statistical package for social science. The result demonstrated that RANKL level had a positive correlation with age and disease duration in contrast to OPG level showed a negative correlation with age and duration of disease. In the patients group treated with MTX at baseline, the RANKL level was significantly higher (181.336±65.583) than post-therapy (166.097±69.229), while the OPG level at baseline significantly lower (594.398±133.238) than post therapy (614.499±150.879). In ETN treated patients, the level of RANKL in baseline was significantly higher than (231.247±73.134) RANKL level post-therapy (200.363±76.807), while OPG level in baseline waslower (463.263±96.392) than post therapy (503.608±107.692). The study demonstrated in baseline RANKL/OPG ratio significant higher (0.4340±0.234) than post therapy (0.3690±0.222). All RA patients had or were at high risk for osteoporosis.Both Etanarcept and methotrexate produce insignificant differences on OPG and RANKL levels, in the same time this biomarkers are not good indicators for bone state.
This paper presents theoretical parametric study of the curvature ductility capacity for reinforced concrete column sections. The study considers the behavior of concrete and reinforcing steel under different strain rates. A computer program has been written to compute the curvature ductility taking into account the spalling in concrete cover. Strain rate sensitive constitutive models of steel and concrete were used for predicting the moment-curvature relationship of reinforced concrete columns at different rate of straining. The study parameters are the yield strength of main reinforcement, yield strength of transverse reinforcement, compressive strength of concrete, spacing of ties and the axial load. The results indicated that hi
... Show MoreObjective(s): The study aims to assess the early detection of early detection of first degree relatives to type-II
diabetes mellitus throughout the diagnostic tests of Glycated Hemoglobin A1C. (HgbA1C), Oral Glucose Tolerance
Test (OGTT) and to find out the relationship between demographic data and early detection of first degree
relatives to type-II diabetes mellitus.
Methodology: A purposive "non-probability" sample of (200) subjects first degree relatives to type-II diabetes
mellitus was selected from National Center for Diabetes Mellitus/Al-Mustansria University and Specialist Center
for Diabetes Mellitus and Endocrine Diseases/Al-kindy. These related persons have presented the age of (40-70)
years old. A questio
Abstract
The present paper focuses in a particular on the study of the biochar production conditions by the thermal pyrolysis of biomass from local Iraqi palm fronds, in the absence of oxygen. The biochar product can be used as soil improvers. The effect of temperature on the extent of the thermal pyrolysis process was studied in the range from 523 to 773K with a residence time of 15 minutes and nitrogen gas flow rate of 0.1 l/min. The produced biochar was characterized as will as biomass and degradation products. The results showed that the rate of biochar production decreases with the increasing in temperature, also it was noted that the normalized biochar surface area and pore size increases with the increasin
... Show MoreIII-V zinc-blende AlP, AlAs semiconductors and their alloy Aluminum Arsenide phosphide Al AsxP1-x ternary nanocrystals have been investigated using Ab- initio density functional theory (Ab-initio-DFT) at the generalized-gradient approximation (GGA) level with STO-3G basis set coupled with large unit cell method (LUC). The dimension of crystal is found around (1.56 – 2.24) nm at a function of increasing the sizes (8, 16, 54, 64) with different concentration of arsenide (x=0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1) respectively. Gaussian 03 code program has been used throughout this study to calculate some of the physical properties such as the electronic properties energy gap, lattice constant, valence and conduction band as well as density of state. Re
... Show MoreAn analytical expression for the charge density distributions is derived based on the use of occupation numbers of the states and the single particle wave functions of the harmonic oscillator potential with size parameters chosen to reproduce the observed root mean square charge radii for all considered nuclei. The derived expression, which is applicable throughout the whole region of shell nuclei, has been employed in the calculations concerning the charge density distributions for odd- of shell nuclei, such as and nuclei. It is found that introducing an additional parameters, namely and which reflect the difference of the occupation numbers of the states from the prediction of the simple shell model leads to obtain a remarkabl
... Show MoreChlorinated volatile organic compounds (CVOCs) are toxic chemical entities emitted invariably from stationary thermal operations when a trace of chlorine is present. Replacing the high-temperature destruction operations of these compounds with catalytic oxidation has led to the formulation of various potent metal oxides catalysts; among them are ceria-based materials. Guided by recent experimental measurements, this study theoretically investigates the initial steps operating in the interactions of ceria surface CeO2(111) with three CVOC model compounds, namely chloroethene (CE), chloroethane (CA) and chlorobenzene (CB). We find that, the CeO2(111) surface mediates fission of the carbon–chlorine bonds in the CE, CA and CB molecules via mo
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