Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with polymorphic expression. B cells have an essential contribution in immune system activation via the production of different cytokines and functioning as potent antigen-presenting cells. Therefore, a drug that particularly targets B cells may represent an ideal therapeutic approach for SLE. Rituximab (RTX), an anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody causing transient B-cell depletion, has been used to manage SLE. This study aims to assess Rituximab effects on lupus nephritis (LN) patients when added to conventional immunosuppressants. Twenty four patients, 15-32 years old, with class III/IV/V LN were involved in this study. All were on steroids before lupus nephritis occurrence. They were given rituximab induction therapy and mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) maintenance therapy. RTX was indicated for refractory and relapsing SLE. Several investigations done before and after RTX treatment and in the last follow up (done one year after starting Rituximab). Those included protein in urine, serum creatinine, double stranded DNA, C3, C4, and Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (eGFR). Proteinuria decreased significantly after RTX treatment and in the last measurement (P=0.01 and P=0.001, respectively). Serum creatinine significantly decreased only in the last measurement (P=0.02). Double stranded DNA decreased remarkably after treatment (P=0.01) with a further decrease in the last measurement (P=0.006). C3 and C4 increased after treatment but the increase was significant only for C3 (P=0.002) and this increase continues till the last measurement (P=0.0006). Active urine sediments found in fifteen patients and disappeared after RTX treatment. Rituximab can be promising in treating lupus nephritis when used along with traditional immunosuppressants. It can reduce disease activity and improve renal function in such patients.
The unpredictable and huge data generation nowadays by smart computing devices like (Sensors, Actuators, Wi-Fi routers), to handle and maintain their computational processing power in real time environment by centralized cloud platform is difficult because of its limitations, issues and challenges, to overcome these, Cisco introduced the Fog computing paradigm as an alternative for cloud-based computing. This recent IT trend is taking the computing experience to the next level. It is an extended and advantageous extension of the centralized cloud computing technology. In this article, we tried to highlight the various issues that currently cloud computing is facing. Here
... Show MoreWohlfahrtia longicorpuris sp. nov., from Iraq described, illustrated and distinguished from related species. The adults were reared from larvae collected from ulcer of a human face. Wohlfahrtia Brauer and Bergenstam is one of most important genus,which contains 19 species (Pape, 1998), some of these produce myiasis in mammals (Verves,1985).Taxonomic revision of this genus has been carried out by the following authors: Rohdendrof (1956), Zumpt (1965) and Pape (1996).
The dyes Azo have a lengthy history and are a vital part of our daily lives. There are numerous potentials uses for these substances and their derivatives in various industries and environmental and biological research. In this study conversion of various azo compounds into other derivatives, complexes, and polymers was accomplished. This review included examining the chemistry reactions, synthesis, and applications of azo dye ligands and their complexes, mentioned spectral, analytical, thermal, and morphology methods of investigation, and confirmed by mass fragment mechanisms for some azo dyes and metal complexes. One of the aims of this review is to explain the role of these azo dye derivatives and the effect of metal complexes on leather
... Show MoreSentiment analysis refers to the task of identifying polarity of positive and negative for particular text that yield an opinion. Arabic language has been expanded dramatically in the last decade especially with the emergence of social websites (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Several studies addressed sentiment analysis for Arabic language using various techniques. The most efficient techniques according to the literature were the machine learning due to their capabilities to build a training model. Yet, there is still issues facing the Arabic sentiment analysis using machine learning techniques. Such issues are related to employing robust features that have the ability to discrimina
... Show MoreThe dyes Azo have a lengthy history and are a vital part of our daily lives. There are numerous potentials uses for these substances and their derivatives in various industries and environmental and biological research. In this study conversion of various azo compounds into other derivatives, complexes, and polymers was accomplished. This review included examining the chemistry reactions, synthesis, and applications of azo dye ligands and their complexes, mentioned spectral, analytical, thermal, and morphology methods of investigation, and confirmed by mass fragment mechanisms for some azo dyes and metal complexes. One of the aims of this review is to explain the role of these azo dye derivatives and the effect of metal complexes on leather
... Show MoreIn this paper a system is designed on an FPGA using a Nios II soft-core processor, to detect the colour of a specific surface and moving a robot arm accordingly. The surface being detected is bounded by a starting mark and an ending mark, to define the region of interest. The surface is also divided into sections as rows and columns and each section can have any colour. Such a system has so many uses like for example warehouses or even in stores where their storing areas can be divided to sections and each section is coloured and a robot arm collects objects from these sections according to the section’s colour also the robot arm can organize objects in sections according to the section’s colour.
The growing use of tele
This paper presents a new secret diffusion scheme called Round Key Permutation (RKP) based on the nonlinear, dynamic and pseudorandom permutation for encrypting images by block, since images are considered particular data because of their size and their information, which are two-dimensional nature and characterized by high redundancy and strong correlation. Firstly, the permutation table is calculated according to the master key and sub-keys. Secondly, scrambling pixels for each block to be encrypted will be done according the permutation table. Thereafter the AES encryption algorithm is used in the proposed cryptosystem by replacing the linear permutation of ShiftRows step with the nonlinear and secret pe
... Show MoreA case of angiolymphoid hyperplasia with eosinophilia (ALH) is reported in a 42-year-old woman who developed multiple nodules behind the ear. Angiolymphoid hyperplasia with eosinophilia usually occurs on the head and neck of young adults and is more common in women than in men. Characteristic histologic features of ALH present in this case included proliferation of thick-walled blood vessels lined by prominent endothelial cells, infiltration of the interstitium by chronic inflammatory cells (mainly eosinophils), and presence of lymphoid follicles with germinal centers. The patient referred for surgeon for complete excision. in this context , cases previously described in the literature, and the differential diagnosis of ALH are discussed
... Show MoreIn Computer-based applications, there is a need for simple, low-cost devices for user authentication. Biometric authentication methods namely keystroke dynamics are being increasingly used to strengthen the commonly knowledge based method (example a password) effectively and cheaply for many types of applications. Due to the semi-independent nature of the typing behavior it is difficult to masquerade, making it useful as a biometric. In this paper, C4.5 approach is used to classify user as authenticated user or impostor by combining unigraph features (namely Dwell time (DT) and flight time (FT)) and digraph features (namely Up-Up Time (UUT) and Down-Down Time (DDT)). The results show that DT enhances the performance of digraph features by i
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