All major organs may be impacted by the connective disease systemic lupus erythematosus, a separate risk factor for coronary artery disease (CAD). Adhesion molecules like intercellular adhesion molecules (ICAM) and vascular cell adhesion molecules (VCAM) can detect endothelial damage and dysfunction, which appear to play a crucial role. This study investigated whether people with SLE had elevated subclinical and clinical atherosclerosis risk factors. Traditional CAD risk factors such as smoking, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia cannot entirely explain this elevation. It is thought that immunological dysfunction also increases CAD risk in SLE patients. The study aimed to assess early endothelial changes in SLE Iraqi female patients without previous coronary artery lesions by exploring a potential relationship between circulating VCAM-1 and ICAM-1 as risk factors for atherosclerosis and the relationship of CAD with SLE disease and its severity; further, the study explained the effect of the hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) on the lipid profile levels of the patients. 92 female SLE patients were divided into mild, moderate, and severe, according to the SLE disease activity index 2000 (SLEDAI-2k), compared with 30 apparently healthy control individuals. All of them need a history of CAD. Serum VCAM-1, ICAM-1 level, VCAM-1/ICAM1 ratio, TC, HDL, LDL levels TC/HDL and LDL/HDL ratios were measured. sVCAM-1, sICAM-1 levels and VCAM-1/ICAM-1 ratio were significantly and gradually increased in patient groups compared with control. Serum TC, HDL and LDL levels were significantly reduced in the SLE patients compared to the control. At the same time, the TC/HDL and LDL/HDL ratios were significantly elevated with the severity of the SLE disease. sVCAM-1, sICAM-1 level and VCAM1/ICAM-1 ratio together with serum TC/HDL and LDL/HDL may improve coronary artery disease risk categorization in SLE patients without acute coronary syndromes. Furthermore, they were more sensitive in severe SLE instances than in moderate and mild ones, suggesting that they may be related to the extent of coronary lesions in SLE patients. VCAM-1 had a higher sensitivity than ICAM-1 in detecting and severity screening for CAD in SLE patients. Keywords: VCAM-1, ICAM-1, SLE, Atherosclerosis
Experimental tests were conducted to study the behavior of skirted foundations rested on dry medium sandy soil subjected to vertical and inclined loads. To achieve this goal, a small-scale physical model was designed and performed which contained an aluminum circular footing (100 mm) in diameter and (10 mm) in thickness and skirts with different heights, local medium poorly graded dry sand is placed in a steel soil container (2 mm) thick with internal dimensions (1000 mm x 1000 mm in cross section and 800 mm in height). The main objective of this study was to evaluate the response of skirt attached to the foundation at different skirt (L/D) ratios (0.0, 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5) and is subjected to point load at different angles of inclinat
... Show MoreZygapophyseal joints (or facet joints), are a plane synovial joint which located between the articular facet processes of the vertebral arch which is freely guided movable joints. Ten dried vertebrae were used for the lumbar region and taking (L4) as a sample to reveal stress pathways across the joints by using ANSYS program under different loading conditions which used Finite Elements Analysis model. Results obtained from the ANSYS program are important in understanding the boundary conditions for load analysis and the points of stress concentration which explained from the anatomical point of view and linked to muscle and ligament attachments. This model used as a computational tool to joint biomechanics and to prosthetic im
... Show MoreIMPLICATION OF GEOMECHANICAL EVALUATION ON TIGHT RESERVOIR DEVELOPMENT / SADI RESERVOIR HALFAYA OIL FIELD
Two EM techniques, terrain conductivity and VLF-Radiohm resistivity (using two
different instruments of Geonics EM 34-3 and EMI6R respectively) have been applied to
evaluate their ability in delineation and measuring the depth of shallow subsurface cavities
near Haditha city.
Thirty one survey traverses were achieved to distinguish the subsurface cavities in the
investigated area. Both EM techniques are found to be successfiul tools in study area.
In this work, the effect of the addition of bright nickel plating and silver carried out by the electroplating method has been studied, on the coating of copper nanoparticles on the copper base metal via the process of thermal evaporation. The improvement of the solar absorber using CuNP in combination with the bright nickel and silver was obtained to be better than copper nanoparticles individually. A bright nickel enhanced the absorbed thermal stability. Also, other optical properties, absorptions, and emissivity slightly decreased from (93% to 87%), while the existence of silver had a slight impact on absorption of about (86.50%). On the other hand, thermal conductivity was evaluated using hot disk analyzer. The results showed a good
... Show MoreBacterial water pollution is a genuine general wellbeing concern since it causes various maladies. Antimicrobial nanofibers can be integrated by incorporating nanobiocides, for example, silver nanoparticles into nanofibers. Nylon 6 was dissolved in formic acid at a concentration of (25 wt. %) and tough antibacterial (AgNO3/Nylon) nanofibers were produced utilizing electrospinning system. Polymer solution was tested before accomplishing electrospinning process to acquire its surface tension, electric conductivity and viscosity, where every one of those parameters increased relatively with increasing concentration of (AgNO3) additions. SEM and EDX spectra were utilized to focus on the morphology, surface elemental mem
... Show MoreAkaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) is a popular method for estimation the number of sources impinging on an array of sensors, which is a problem of great interest in several applications. The performance of AIC degrades under low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). This paper is concerned with the development and application of quadrature mirror filters (QMF) for improving the performance of AIC. A new system is proposed to estimate the number of sources by applying AIC to the outputs of filter bank consisting quadrature mirror filters (QMF). The proposed system can estimate the number of sources under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).
In this work, chemical spray pyrolysis deposition (CSP) technique was used to prepare a mixed In2O3-CdO thin films with different CdO content (10, 30 and 50)%volume ratio on glass substrates at 150 ᵒC substrate temperature. The surface morphology and structural properties were measured to find the optimum conditions to improve thin films properties for using as photo detector. Current –Time, the sensitivity and response speed vary for each mixture. Samples with 10% vol. CdO content has square pulse response with average rise time nearly 1s and fall time 1s.
Sphingolipids (SLs) are major structural constituents of eukaryotes, including the kinetoplastid parasite Leishmania. SLs are important for cellular trafficking and signaling and participate in different cell functions, such as, differentiation and cell death (apoptosis). In this study we have investigated the viability of Leishmania major wild type (W.T) and L. major knockout LmLCB2, one of two subunits of serine palmitoyl transferase (SPT) after treatment with myriocin (potent inhibitor of SPT) in order to detect the survival and proliferation of the parasites in vitro. This is to focus on the de novo sphingolipids biosynthesis pathway in both Leishmania wild type which can synthesize SPT and knockout Leishmania which genetically ablated
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