Background: Rituximab is a chimeric IgG1 kappa immunoglobulin that has been genetically modified to incorporate human constant region sequences together with murine light- and heavy-chain variable region sequences. People use it to treat rheumatoid arthritis and certain malignancies. Objective: The study aimed to assess the potential association between the serum levels of Factor I, CD59, interleukins (IL)-6, and interferon-gamma (IFN)-γ and the response to Rituximab treatment in Iraqi rheumatoid arthritis patients. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at the rheumatology center at Baghdad Teaching Hospital. Ninety adult patients who have been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and are receiving Rituximab intravenous infusions were included. The enrolled patients were divided into a responder group (45 patients) and a non-responder group (45 patients). The response to Rituximab was assessed according to the 28-joint Disease Activity Score (DAS28). Results: The serum levels of Factor I and CD59 were significantly higher in the non-responders group in comparison to the responders group. In addition, the serum IL-6 and IFN-γ levels were significantly elevated in the non-responders group in comparison to the responders group. The estimated marker serum levels showed a strong, significant correlation with the 6-month change in DAS28. Conclusions: In Rituximab nonresponder RA patients, serum levels of Factor I, CD59, Factor H, IL-6, and IFN-γ are higher, and they have good potential to be used in the assessment of the response to Rituximab therapy.
Various speech enhancement Algorithms (SEA) have been developed in the last few decades. Each algorithm has its advantages and disadvantages because the speech signal is affected by environmental situations. Distortion of speech results in the loss of important features that make this signal challenging to understand. SEA aims to improve the intelligibility and quality of speech that different types of noise have degraded. In most applications, quality improvement is highly desirable as it can reduce listener fatigue, especially when the listener is exposed to high noise levels for extended periods (e.g., manufacturing). SEA reduces or suppresses the background noise to some degree, sometimes called noise suppression alg
... Show MoreThis research dealt with desalting of East Baghdad crude oil using pellets of either anionic, PVC, quartz, PE, PP or
nonionic at different temperature ranging from 30 to 80 °C, pH from 6 to 8, time from 2 to 20 minutes, volume percent
washing water from 5 to 25% and fluid velocity from 0.5 to 0.8 m/s under voltage from 2 to 6 kV and / or using additives
such as alkyl benzene sulphonate or sodium stearate. The optimum conditions and materials were reported to remove
most of water from East Baghdad wet crude oil.
Several attempts have been made to modify the quasi-Newton condition in order to obtain rapid convergence with complete properties (symmetric and positive definite) of the inverse of Hessian matrix (second derivative of the objective function). There are many unconstrained optimization methods that do not generate positive definiteness of the inverse of Hessian matrix. One of those methods is the symmetric rank 1( H-version) update (SR1 update), where this update satisfies the quasi-Newton condition and the symmetric property of inverse of Hessian matrix, but does not preserve the positive definite property of the inverse of Hessian matrix where the initial inverse of Hessian matrix is positive definiteness. The positive definite prope
... Show MoreThis paper is dealing with non-polynomial spline functions "generalized spline" to find the approximate solution of linear Volterra integro-differential equations of the second kind and extension of this work to solve system of linear Volterra integro-differential equations. The performance of generalized spline functions are illustrated in test examples
This paper introduces a Certain Subclass of Meromorphic Univalent Positives Coefficients Defined by the q-Difference Operator. Coefficient estimates are investigated and obtained, and the upped bound is calculated.
If feminist philosophy in the context of feminist research focuses on how to produce an alternative knowledge and culture for women and forming anew awareness of their roles in the face of prevailing misconceptions then the topic of Islamic feminism is presented as a philosophical topic in the field of human knowledge to discuss how to produce an alternative knowledge of traditional knowledge prevailing in patriarchal societies to restore the balance of power and authority in the relationship between the sexes to create an effective feminist role in advocating for and defending womenś issues to achieve this Islamic feminism sought to establish an Islamic epistemology .
Box-Wilson experimental design method was employed to optimized lead ions removal efficiency by bulk liquid membrane (BLM) method. The optimization procedure was primarily based on four impartial relevant parameters: pH of feed phase (4-6), pH of stripping phase (9-11), carrier concentration TBP (5-10) %, and initial metal concentration (60-120 ppm). maximum recovery efficiency of lead ions is 83.852% was virtually done following thirty one-of-a-kind experimental runs, as exact through 24-Central Composite Design (CCD). The best values for the aforementioned four parameters, corresponding to the most restoration efficiency were: 5, 10, 7.5% (v/v), and 90 mg/l, respectively. The obtained experimental data had been
... Show MoreThe problem of water scarcity is becoming common in many parts of the world, to overcome part of this problem proper management of water and an efficient irrigation system are needed. Irrigation with a buried vertical ceramic pipe is known as a very effective in the management of irrigation water. The two- dimensional transient flow of water from a buried vertical ceramic pipe through homogenous porous media is simulated numerically using the HYDRUS/2D software. Different values of pipe lengths and hydraulic conductivity were selected. In addition, different values of initial volumetric soil water content were assumed in this simulation as initial conditions. Different value
... Show MoreThe Dirichlet process is an important fundamental object in nonparametric Bayesian modelling, applied to a wide range of problems in machine learning, statistics, and bioinformatics, among other fields. This flexible stochastic process models rich data structures with unknown or evolving number of clusters. It is a valuable tool for encoding the true complexity of real-world data in computer models. Our results show that the Dirichlet process improves, both in distribution density and in signal-to-noise ratio, with larger sample size; achieves slow decay rate to its base distribution; has improved convergence and stability; and thrives with a Gaussian base distribution, which is much better than the Gamma distribution. The performance depen
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