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.
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 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 MoreAccurate land use and land cover (LU/LC) classification is essential for various geospatial applications. This research applied a Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) classifier on the Landsat 7 (ETM+ 2010) & 8 (OLI 2020) satellite scenes to identify the land cover materials of the Shatt al-Arab region which is located in the east of Basra province during ten years with an estimate of the spectral signature using ENVI 5.6 software of each cover with the proportion of its area to the area of the study region and produce maps of the classified region. The bands of these datasets were analyzed using the Optimum Index Factor (OIF) statistic. The highest OIF represents the best and most appropr
The 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 MoreAny person, regardless of his location in the air, whether he was kidnapped or trained, and then he performs a certain work, believes that his work is in vain, and by God, his deeds. I wonder if those who hold him in the first place will be safe in good form. He said that the essence of justice in the story is the story:
These are given the meaning we have fought in the fact that each group of. He went beyond creating a group of blocs, sects, and parties. If justice indicated one meaning, these relationships between people and peace would diminish. In fact, justice has only one concept, but there are several associations with it in the field of divorced one of these synonyms. However, the variation in racist drums in the encounte
... 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
... Show MoreToxoplasmosis is a widespread infection usually caused by Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) parasite. It occurs in humans and other warm blooded animals, causing severe problems. It was found that there is an alteration in the trace elements concentrations levels associated with some human diseases. This study aimed to investigate the changes in the concentrations of some trace elements (Mg, Fe , Zn, and Cu) in the sera of 60 immunocompetent patients with chronic toxoplasmosis and 82 healthy individuals as a control group. Measuring the serum level of seropositivity rate of anti-T. gondii antibodies was done by Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) Kit, while the concentrations of trace elements were measured by absorption spectrophotometry
... Show MoreThe compound 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), an environmental contaminant, is a potent ligand for aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR). In the current study, we made an exciting observation that naive C57BL/6 mice that were exposed i.p. to TCDD showed massive mobilization of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) in the peritoneal cavity. These MDSCs were highly immunosuppressive and attenuated Con A–induced hepatitis upon adoptive transfer. TCDD administration in naive mice also led to induction of several chemokines and cytokines in the peritoneal cavity and serum (CCL2, CCL3, CCL4, CCL11, CXCL1, CXCL2, CXCL5, CXCL9, G-CSF, GM-CSF, VEGF, and M-CSF) and chemokine receptors