Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a collection of chronic, recurrent inflammatory illnesses of the gastrointestinal system, including Crohn's disease (CD). Infliximab is one of the biological medications used to treat CD. Therapeutic drug monitoring has evolved as a treatment in IBD, aiming to optimize benefit while meeting more demanding, objective end criteria. Objective: To determine the achievement of target trough level (TL), develop anti-drug antibodies (ADAs) to infliximab, assess response to therapy, and study TL relations with different variables. Methods: The present study was cross-sectional and conducted from May 2022 to November 2022. It included 40 CD patients allotted into 2 groups: group 1 patients achieved the TL target, and group 2 patients did not achieve the TL target. Results: Twenty-two patients achieved target TL, while 18 patients did not. Dose escalation is recommended for 11 patients, switching therapy for 15 patients, and continuing the same dosage regimen for 14 patients. In addition, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein, serum calprotectin and ADAs were significantly lower in patients who achieved target infliximab TL. Only serum calprotectin can be used to predict the achievement of the target TL of infliximab. Conclusions: Therapeutic drug monitoring of infliximab to determine the TL and ADAs can help to explain why some patients do not respond to this drug. Serum calprotectin may be used as a novel marker to predict the TL and response to infliximab.
The behavior and shear strength of full-scale (T-section) reinforced concrete deep beams, designed according to the strut-and-tie approach of ACI Code-19 specifications, with various large web openings were investigated in this paper. A total of 7 deep beam specimens with identical shear span-to-depth ratios have been tested under mid-span concentrated load applied monotonically until beam failure. The main variables studied were the effects of width and depth of the web openings on deep beam performance. Experimental data results were calibrated with the strut-and-tie approach, adopted by ACI 318-19 code for the design of deep beams. The provided strut-and-tie design model in ACI 318-19 code provision was assessed and found to be u
... Show MorePurpose - This study relies on the descriptive and analytical approach through collecting and analyzing the necessary data, as this approach focuses on polling the opinions of the research sample and its directions, and aims to develop a model that studies the relationship between knowledge creation and organizational ambidexterity in Iraqi private banks and verifying its validity experimentally.
Design / Methodology / Introduction - A survey was conducted through a questionnaire form to collect data from a sample of (113) managers in private commercial banks. In addition, this study used the AMOS program and the ready-to-use statistical program package (SPSS V.25) to test the proposed hypotheses of the t
... Show MoreA new panel method had been developed to account for unsteady nonlinear subsonic flow. Two boundary conditions were used to solve the potential flow about complex configurations of airplanes. Dirichlet boundary condition and Neumann formulation are frequently applied to the configurations that have thick and thin surfaces respectively. Mixed boundary conditions were used in the present work to simulate the connection between thick fuselage and thin wing surfaces. The matrix of linear equations was solved every time step in a marching technique with Kelvin's theorem for the unsteady wake modeling. To make the method closer to the experimental data, a Nonlinear stripe theory which is based on a two-dimensional viscous-inviscid interac
... Show MoreDue to the vast using of digital images and the fast evolution in computer science and especially the using of images in the social network.This lead to focus on securing these images and protect it against attackers, many techniques are proposed to achieve this goal. In this paper we proposed a new chaotic method to enhance AES (Advanced Encryption Standards) by eliminating Mix-Columns transformation to reduce time consuming and using palmprint biometric and Lorenz chaotic system to enhance authentication and security of the image, by using chaotic system that adds more sensitivity to the encryption system and authentication for the system.
A numerical method for the calculation of the three-dimensional wake rollup behind symmetric wings with ground effect and its aerodynamic characteristics for steady low subsonic flow have been developed. A non-planar quadrilateral vortex-ring method with vortex wake relaxation iterative scheme for lifting surfaces is obtained. A computer program was build to treat wings with breaks, span wise trailing edge flaps, local dihedral angle, camber, twist and ground effect. Forces and moments are obtained from vector product of local velocity and vortex strength multiplied by density. The program has been validated for a number of configurations for which experimental data is available. Good agreement has been obtained for these configurations. Al
... Show MoreIn this paper, a discretization of a three-dimensional fractional-order prey-predator model has been investigated with Holling type III functional response. All its fixed points are determined; also, their local stability is investigated. We extend the discretized system to an optimal control problem to get the optimal harvesting amount. For this, the discrete-time Pontryagin’s maximum principle is used. Finally, numerical simulation results are given to confirm the theoretical outputs as well as to solve the optimality problem.
The study evaluates the incidence of inferior alveolar nerve injuries in mandibular fractures, the duration of their recovery, and the factors associated with them. Fifty-two patients with mandibular fractures involving the ramus, angle, and body regions were included in this study; the inferior alveolar nerve was examined for neurological deficit posttraumatically using sharp/blunt differentiation method, and during the follow-up period the progression of neural recovery was assessed. The incidence of neural injury of the inferior alveolar nerve was 42.3%, comminuted and displaced linear fractures were associated with higher incidence of inferior alveolar nerve injury and prolonged recovery time, and recovery of inferior alveolar nerve fun
... Show MoreIn this paper, simulation studies and applications of the New Weibull-Inverse Lomax (NWIL) distribution were presented. In the simulation studies, different sample sizes ranging from 30, 50, 100, 200, 300, to 500 were considered. Also, 1,000 replications were considered for the experiment. NWIL is a fat tail distribution. Higher moments are not easily derived except with some approximations. However, the estimates have higher precisions with low variances. Finally, the usefulness of the NWIL distribution was illustrated by fitting two data sets