The angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) I\D gene polymorphism influences the blood ACE enzyme activity. Renoprotective effect of ACE inhibitors (ACEIs) varies among patients due to genetic variation, particularly in Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone System genes. This study investigates the genetic variations of ACE I\D and AGT1RA1166C gene polymorphisms in the antiproteinuric effect of ACEI therapy in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients. This is a cross-sectional study that included 76 T2DM patients who are ACEI users, divided into two groups: T2DM without diabetic kidney disease (DKD) included 31 patients, and T2DM with DKD included 45 patients. Urine samples were taken for measurement of urine albumin and creatinine, then calculation of albumin-creatinine ratio (ACR). Blood samples were taken for the measurement of serum parameters and also for the extraction of DNA for genetic evaluation of ACEI/D and AGT1RA1166C gene polymorphisms. The results reveal that T2DM patients carrying the ID genotype have significantly lower ACE1 levels compared to DD and II carriers (p = 0.012). When grouping patients according to the ACR, serum ACE1 and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) levels were higher in DKD compared to normalbuminuric patients, with the only significant difference for ACE2. After subdividing according to ACE I\D genotypes, the ACE2 differences were only significant in DD genotype carriers (p = 0.049) between DKD and normalbuminuric groups. While for AGT1RA1166C polymorphisms, the AC genotype shows non-significantly lower levels for ACE1 and ACE2. After subdividing according to AGT1RA1166C genotypes, ACE2 levels were significantly higher in DKD patients carrying the AA genotype (p = 0.015). Binary logistic regression analysis revealed that both ACE (I\D) and AGT1RA1166C genes are significant predictors of ACE1 levels after controlling age, gender, and DKD state. This study concluded that both genes are predictors of ACE1 levels; in addition, ID genotype carriers and AC genotype carriers had lower ACE1 and ACE2 levels with lower ACR and higher glomerular filtration rate, identifying better ACEIs responses in ID and AC carriers.
Background: Semen contamination is a detrimental factor in decreasing fertility. Seasonal changes may affect the contamination, too. Objectives: This study was designed to detect semen contamination in ovine and caprine during different seasons. Methods: Six fully mature male sheep and goats were subjected to electro-ejaculator collection twice monthly from February 1, 2022, to January 31, 2023 (Spring, February 1, 2022-April 30, 2022; Summer, May 1, 2022, July 31, 2022; Autumn August 1, 2022, October 31, 2022; Winter November 1, 2022, January 31, 2023), for studying the seasonal effect. A total of 288 semen samples were collected from both species (36 samples from each per season). All samples were subjected to bacterial isolatio
... Show MoreThis study evaluated the knowledge and practice of breast self-examination (BSE), among a sample of educated Iraqi women. The study sample comprised 858 women aged 18–62 years affiliated to 6 major Iraqi universities, categorized according to occupation as teaching staff (11.5%), administrative staff (18.0%) and students (70.5%). Data were collected by a self-completed questionnaire. In all, 93.9% of the women had heard about BSE, the main source of information was television (39.9%), doctors (18.4%) and the awareness campaign of the Iraqi National Breast Cancer Research Programme (11.6%). Only 53.9% of the women practised BSE; the most common excuses by those that did not were lack of knowledge of the significance of BSE (42.0%) and lack
... Show MoreThe current study aimed to identify the morphological description and branches of the bronchial tree and lung for the weasel
The knowledge related with lexical items can be realized as including relations of meaning a cross words. Words that share a similarity of meaning are called to be synonymous, and words that share a contrary of meaning are called to be antonymous. Both of them are universal linguistic phenomenon that exist in terms of linguistic system of every language. The present study aims at finding out areas of difficulty that Iraqi EFL learners encounter in the use of synonymy and antonymy, both on the recognition and production levels. Also tries to detect the main reasons behind such difficulties. A diagnostic test of two parts, namely, recognition and production, is designed. The test is built to include two linguistic phenomenon which are: synony
... Show MoreMetadiscourse markers are means for organizing a writer’s information and create a connection with her/his readers. When students write, they usually focus on one type of these markers that is the interactive markers and belittling the use of the other type which is the interactional markers. That is to say, they emphasize on presenting and organizing their information only. Therefore, this study is conducted to bridge this gap. The researchers have selected 18 thesis abstracts. Nine of them are written by Iraqi students of English and the rest by American students. The aims of the study are to examine the types and sub-types of metadiscourse markers used by American and Iraqi students; investigate comparatively the impact of the metad
... Show MoreThe current research aims to examine the effect of the rapid learning method in developing creative thinking among second-grade female students in the subject of history. Thus, the researcher has adopted an experimental design of two groups to suit the nature of the research. The sample of the study consists of (36) randomly selected students from Al-Shafaq Secondary School for Women, which are divided randomly into two groups. The first group represents the experimental; it includes (31) students who studied the subject of history using the quick learning method. The second group, on the other hand, is the control group, which consists of (32) students, who studied the same subject using the traditional way. Before starting with the exp
... Show MoreVision loss happens due to diabetic retinopathy (DR) in severe stages. Thus, an automatic detection method applied to diagnose DR in an earlier phase may help medical doctors to make better decisions. DR is considered one of the main risks, leading to blindness. Computer-Aided Diagnosis systems play an essential role in detecting features in fundus images. Fundus images may include blood vessels, exudates, micro-aneurysm, hemorrhages, and neovascularization. In this paper, our model combines automatic detection for the diabetic retinopathy classification with localization methods depending on weakly-supervised learning. The model has four stages; in stage one, various preprocessing techniques are app
Liquid-Liquid Extraction of Cu(II) ion in aqueous solution by dicyclohexyl-18-crown-6 as extractant in dichloroethane was studied .The extraction efficiency was investigated by a spectrophometric method. The reagent form a coloured complex which has been a quantitatively extracted at pH 6.3. The method obeys Beer`s law over range from (2.5-22.5) ppm with the correlation coefficient of 0.9989. The molar absorptivity the stoichiometry of extracted complex is found to be 1:2. the proposed method is very sensitive and selective.