Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive airflow limitation that is preventable but not curable. It is associated with persistent symptoms that cause a considerable burden on individual productivity at work, and daily activities, and reduced quality of life, also burdening the healthcare system and society. Objectives: The study aims to measure the burden of COPD on patients in terms of daily activities and work productivity. It also seeks to investigate some inflammatory biomarkers' levels and their correlation with selected outcomes. Patients and Methods: A cross-sectional study on 120 stable COPD patients who were diagnosed and treated according to the GOLD guidelines at Kirkuk General Hospital's chest and Internal Medicine consultation clinics, and in private internist clinics in Kirkuk City, Iraq between January and April 2023. The Work Productivity and Activity Impairment Questionnaire (WPAI-COPD) measured the Burden of COPD. The symptom burden was assessed by the COPD assessment test (CAT). The level of IL-6 monoclonal antibodies was measured via a Roche Cobas 6000 analyzer and TNF-α using the ELISA sandwich technique. All these devices and machines were authorized by the Ministry of Health, Iraq. Results: The mean age was (54.1 ± 8.12) years, 62.5% being males and 37.5% being females; 41.7% were public sector employees, and 39.2% were self-employed. Due to COPD, the overall work loss was (45.9±18.91) days, the mean percentage of absenteeism was (10.9% ± 12.31%), activity impairment was (47.5% ±17.79%) among all patients, presenteeism was (40.8 ± 15.05%,) and COPD-related retirees were 14.2% of the study group. The mean CAT score (19.3±5.63) was high and the most troubling symptom among patients was chest tightness. WPAI-COPD scores were higher in older age and longer disease duration. The levels of biomarkers were above the reference ranges, the mean IL-6 level was (69.4 ± 35.29) pg/ml, and the mean TNF-α was (72.3 ± 22.45) pg/ ml. Conclusions: COPD patients exhibit a disease burden in terms of productivity loss at work and activity impairment that increases with aging and disease duration. COPD patients with low BMI are more prone to a decline in lung functions and to worse symptoms.
The study aimed to highlight the reality of the functional pressures with its dimensions (role ambiguity, role conflict, role burden, glass ceiling, and discrimination in composition). The researchers also relied on the questionnaire as a essential tool for data collection. The field study was conducted at the University of Mohammed Khiedr - Biskra -, the study was conducted on the basis of the total survey, which included all the workers of the 6 faculties of Biskra University (523 female employees).
After the analyzing of the data using the version 21 of the statistical program Spss, The study reached a number of results, the most of them is the low level of the functiona
... Show MoreThis article discusses the peculiarities of the Arabic root, its phonemic structure, and morphological categorization. The pure appearance of the Arabic root in language categorization allows you to separate the onomatopoeic feature of inflectional structure and phonetic rules of the Arabic language by which the root is categorized. This phenomenon of meaningful consonant phonemes in the Arabic roots makes the theory of onomatopoeia practicable not just only in Arabic but also in other Semitic languages. Moreover, the first consonant of an Arabic root usually contains the word's primary, essential meaning, and the second and third lookup. Also, in this work, it is noted that the grammar of the Arabic language has many features aimed
... Show MoreThe study area is witnessing divergence where I am North wind North East wind as we find that the north wind is getting replicated as we move from the south, The reason can be attributed to the nature of the surface of the region, with at least repeat this wind the northern region to the presence of mountain ranges, while we find that energizes the surface in the center and south helped to increase repeat this wind gusts, It also finds that the North wind East prevail in the northern region and least replicated as we move from the north to the south and to the fact that North stations are within blowing this wind sites for the circles near the display of high pressure located centers to the north-east, north and distancing itself from pa
... Show MoreThe present study evaluates the effects of Ginkgo biloba extract as monotherapy on the glycemic status, insulin resistance (IR), body mass index (BMI), and visceral adiposity index (VAI), in addition to the inflammatory markers, oxidative status and leptin level in patients with metabolic syndrome in comparison with metformin.
The study is a randomized, double-blind pilot study conducted during the period May to September, 2020. Fifty patients were recruited in the study and they were allocated into two groups (25 per each group): Ginkgo biloba and Metformin groups, they received (120 mg Ginkgo biloba extract/ capsule) and (500 mg Metformin/ capsule) respectively; orally as a single dose for 90 days. Blood samples were taken at z
... Show MoreObjective: To evaluate knowledge towards smoking and its relationship with lung cancer among members of
Baghdad Nursing College.
Methodology: The study comprised 100 affiliates from the College of Nursing/ University of Baghdad that
included students, teaching staff and employees. All data was collected through a structured questionnaire
prepared by the National Cancer Research Center which were answered during a scientific symposium
organized by the center on lung Cancer Awareness in March 2016.The data were analyzed by using the SPSS,
version 22
Results: The age of the respondents ranged from (19-64 years); 76% were females and only 4% were smokers.
The results showed that the mean score for the level of knowled
Biodiesel define as the mono-alkyl esters of vegetable oil and animal fats is an alternative diesel fuel that is steadily gaining attention because the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas has been identify as a major cause of the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere and causing global warming.
The present work concerns with estimating the physical properties experimentally such as kinematic viscosity, density, flash point and carbon residue of biodiesel that produced by the esterification reaction of methanol and oleic acid with homogeneous catalysts H2SO4 in a lab-scale packed reactive distillation column using the best operating conditions of methanol to oleic acid 8:1,
Forest fires continue to rise during the dry season and they are difficult to stop. In this case, high temperatures in the dry season can cause an increase in drought index that could potentially burn the forest every time. Thus, the government should conduct surveillance throughout the dry season. Continuous surveillance without the focus on a particular time becomes ineffective and inefficient because of preventive measures carried out without the knowledge of potential fire risk. Based on the Keetch-Byram Drought Index (KBDI), formulation of Drought Factor is used just for calculating the drought today based on current weather conditions, and yesterday's drought index. However, to find out the factors of drought a day after, the data
... Show MoreThe relative strength index (RSI) is one of the best known technical analysis indicators; it provides the speculators by prior signals about the future stock’s prices, and because the speculations in shares of companies which listed in the Iraq Stock Exchange have a high degree of risk, like risk of shares prices felling, so the speculators became committed to use some methods to reduce these risks, and one of these methods is the technical analysis by using the relative strength index (RSI) which enable the speculators of choosing the right time for buy and sell the stocks and the right time to enter or leave the market by using the historical rice data. And from here the problem of the research formulated as “Is the using of
... Show MoreThe text has many connotations in the Arabic language, such as vowel points, designation, completion, etc., and the original meaning of the text is to show. The Western text has its owen independent semantic unit .The biblical texts are a mixture of what was reported by the Prophet Moses (peace be upon him) and what the authors described in terms of texts over many centuries.The meaning of the text is guidance and payment, and it is a natural connotation. The religious text for Muslims is divided into peremptory texts that are national proof. The evidence for the meaning of the text is proven by language, and it is not required that the researcher be a jurist. The approach is a factual questionnaire by the researcher according to a speci
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