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.
When the flange of a reinforced concrete spandrel beam is in tension, current design codes and specifications enable a portion of the bonded flexure tension reinforcement to be distributed over an effective flange width. The flexural behavior of the RC L-shaped spandrel beam when reinforcement is laterally displaced in the tension flange is investigated experimentally and numerically in this work. Numerical analysis utilizing the finite element method is performed on discretized flanged beam models validated using experimentally verified L-shaped beam specimens to achieve study objectives. A parametric study was carried out to evaluate the influence of various factors on the beam’s flexure behavior. Results showed that
... Show MoreThe avoidance strategy of prey to predation and the predation strategy for predators are important topics in evolutionary biology. Both prey and predators adjust their behaviors in order to obtain the maximal benefits and to raise their biomass for each. Therefore, this paper is aimed at studying the impact of prey’s fear and group defense against predation on the dynamics of the food-web model. Consequently, in this paper, a mathematical model that describes a tritrophic Leslie-Gower food-web system is formulated. Sokol-Howell type of function response is adapted to describe the predation process due to the prey’s group defensive capability. The effects of fear due to the predation process are considered in the first two levels
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Experimental investigation of the influence of inserting the metal foam to the solar chimney to induce natural ventilation are described and analyzed in this work. To carry out the experimental test, two identical solar chimneys (without insertion of metal foam and with insertion of metal foam) are designed and placed facing south with dimensions of length× width× air gap (2 m× 1 m× 0.2 m). Four incline angles are tested (20o,30o,45o,60o) for each chimney in Baghdad climate condition (33.3o latitude, 44.4o longitude) on October, November, December 2018. The solar chimney performance is investigated by experimentally recording absorber pl
... Show MoreThe current research aims to identify: 1) the challenges facing blended education from the point of view of teachers of students with disabilities. 2) The challenges facing blended education from the point of view of teachers of students with disabilities according to the gender variable (males-females). 3) The challenges facing blended education from the point of view of teachers of students with disabilities, according to the academic qualifications of graduates
(institute-bachelors-masters). 4) The challenges facing blended education from the point of view of male and female teachers, according to the functional service period with students with disabilities (less than 8 years - from 9 to 15 years - 16 years and above). 5) the
... Show MoreThe article includes the concept of aesthetics through what has been dealt with in the literature by philosophers and researchers who have addressed this concept in an attempt to derive indicators of aesthetics. The article adopted a descriptive and analytical methodology by reviewing recent literature on the concept of aesthetics and its relation to urban planning and design issues. Many subjective and objective aesthetics indicators have been identified, some of which are classified under real aesthetics, and some under fake aesthetics. The indicators were applied to the Kufa Mosque complex and Sahla Mosque complex as a comparative case study. It was found that the indicators of real aesthetics have a higher weight in determining
... Show MorePurpose of research: The purpose of the article is to conduct a comparative analysis of the concept and types of puns in the Russian and Arabic languages. The main focus is on identifying similarities and differences in the definition of a pun, as well as analyzing its various types in both languages. The purpose of the study is to understand how puns are used to achieve comic or semantic effect in different cultural contexts.
Methods: The study includes an analysis of literature providing information about puns in Russian and Arabic. For comparative analysis, methods were used to compare concepts, definitions and types of puns in both languages. The phonetic, semantic and syntactic aspects of the pun are considered,
... Show MoreThe research starts from studying the contractual budget, which is one of the modern trends in preparing public budgets, both operational and capital, in addition to meeting the requirements of the global trend to achieve sustainable growth in all fields, whether financial or non-financial, and tools for the contractual budget have been identified (participation contracts, planning Implementation, monitoring) and studying its impact in supporting sustainable development through its dimensions (economic, social, and environmental). The method of the questionnaire was adopted as a main tool in collecting information on research variables and distributing it to a sample of (70) individuals who dictate positions of professional respo
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Herbs and spices have long been used to support various food products, including dairy products because of their flavoring, taste, texture and general appearance as well as therapeutic properties such as antioxidant activities, infections, microbes, anti-diabetes and hypertension. Therefore, this study aimed to demonstrate the effect of adding ginger, cinnamon, lycopene extract and olive oil on the physiochemical properties, the quality of the soft cheese produced and the extent of its acceptance by the Iraqi consumer, who prefers this product in abundance to other types of cheese. So, this study was prepared
... Show MoreGlassy carbon electrode (GCE) was modified with carbon nanotubes CNT and C60 by attachment and solution evaporation techniques, respectively. CNT/Li+/GCE and C60/Li+/GCE were prepared by modifying CNT/GCE and C60/GCE in Li+ solution via cyclic voltammetry (CV) potential cycling. The sensing characteristics of the modified film electrodes, demonstrated in this study for interference of Mn2+ in different heavy metals ion esp. Hg2+, Cd2+ and Cu2+. The interfering effect was investigated that exert positive interference on the redox peaks of Mn2+. The modification of GCE with nano materials and Li+ act an enhancement for the redox current peaks to observe the effect of interference for Mn2+ in 1:1 ratio with different heavy metals ion.
A simple, sensitive and rapid method was used for the estimate of: Propranolol with Bi (III) to prove the efficiency, reliability and repeatability of the long distance chasing photometer (NAG-ADF-300-2) using continuous flow injection analysis. The method is based on a reaction between propranolol and Bi (III) in an aqueous medium to obtain a yellow precipitate. Optimum parameters were studied to increase the sensitivity for the developed method. A linear range for calibration graph was 0.1-25 mmol/L for cell A and 1-40 mmol/L for cell B, and LOD 51.8698 ng/200 µL and 363.0886 ng /200 µL , respectively to cell A and cell B with correlation coefficient (r) 0.9975 for cell A, 0.9966 for cell B, RSD% was lower than 1%, (n = 8) for the
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