Background: Neural tube defects (NTDs) are said to be inherited in a multifactorial fashion, i.e. genetic-environmental interaction. Maternal nutritional deficiencies had long been reported to cause NTDs, especially folate deficiency during early pregnancy. More attention had been paid to the exact mechanism by which this deficiency state causes these defects in the developing embryo. The most significant of all researches was that connecting reduced folate and increased homocysteine level in maternal serum on one hand and the risk of developing a NTD baby on the other hand. Objectives : to determine the significance of homocysteine level in Iraqi mothers who gave birth to babies with NTDs as compared to normal controls. Patients, Materials

Carbamazepine (CBZ) is a narrow therapeutic index drug used in the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia and psychiatric disorders. Valerian (VAL) is a popular herbal product which should be prescribed to treat insomnia and anxiety. The study was designed to investigate the presence of significant pharmacokinetic (PK) interaction between Valerian (VAL) at different concentrations on Carbamazepine (CBZ) pharmacokinetic parameters in healthy male rabbits. In an in vivo, parallel-randomized controlled trial, the rabbits in three groups "first (control), second and third" were given oral doses of CBZ (50 mg/kg), for "second and third" groups (as test groups) rabbits were given (20 and 40 mg/kg/day) of the VAL respectively, as  suspensi

A field experiment was carried out in the fields of the Field Crops Department - Faculty of Agricultural Engineering Sciences. The study included five inbred lines (ZM43W (ZE), ZM60, ZM49W3E, ZM19, CDCN5), given numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) to study the hybrid vigor and both general and special combing ability (GCA, SCA) of the half diallel mating method, for the spring and fall seasons (2016). The genetic analysis shows that all crosses gave a positive hybrid vigor for grain yield per unit area at the two population densities. the highest value is 116.20% for cross (3´5 )at low density, and 89.22% for cross( 1´4 )at high density. The hybrid vigor for all crosses is positive at two densities for dry matter yield, crop growth rate an

Estimation of the unknown parameters in 2-D sinusoidal signal model can be considered as important and difficult problem. Due to the difficulty to find estimate of all the parameters of this type of models at the same time, we propose sequential non-liner least squares method and sequential robust  M method after their development through the use of sequential  approach in the estimate suggested by Prasad et al to estimate unknown frequencies and amplitudes for the 2-D sinusoidal compounds but depending on Downhill Simplex Algorithm in solving non-linear equations for the purpose of obtaining non-linear parameters estimation which represents frequencies and then use of least squares formula to estimate

BACKGROUND: Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) is a proangiogenic factor that exerts different effects over stem cell survival growth, apoptosis, and adhesion. Its impact on leukemogenesis has been established by many studies. AIM: This study aimed to determine the effect of plasma HGF activity on acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients at presentation and after remission. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This was a cross-sectional prospective study of 30 newly-diagnosed, adult, and AML patients. All patients received the 7+3 treatment protocol. Patients’ clinical data were taken at presentation, and patients were followed up for 6 months to evaluate the clinical status. Plasma HGF levels were estimated by ELISA based methods in the pa

Elastic magnetic electron scattering form factors in Ca-41 have been investigated. 1f7/2 subshell has been adopted as a model space with one neutron, and Millinar, Baymann and Zamick 1f7/2 model space effective interaction (F7MBZ) has been used as a model space effective interaction to generate the model space vectors for the M1, M3, M5, M7, and total form factors. Discarded space (core and higher configuration orbits) have been included through the first order perturbation theory to couple the partice-hole pair of excitation with 2ћω excitation energy in the calculation of the form factors and regarding the realistic interaction density dependence M3Y as a core polarization interaction with five sets of modern fitting parameters. Fina

This paper including a gravitational lens time delays study for a general family of lensing potentials, the popular singular isothermal elliptical potential (SIEP), and singular isothermal elliptical density distribution (SIED) but allows general angular structure. At first section there is an introduction for the selected observations from the gravitationally lensed systems. Then section two shows that the time delays for singular isothermal elliptical potential (SIEP) and singular isothermal elliptical density distributions (SIED) have a remarkably simple and elegant form, and that the result for Hubble constant estimations actually holds for a general family of potentials by combining the analytic results with data for the time dela

This work studies the role of serum apelin-36 and Glutathione S-transferases (GST) activity in association with the hormonal, metabolic profiles and their link to the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in healthy and patients' ladies with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). A total of fifty-four (PCOS) patients and thirty-one healthy woman as a control have been studied. The PCOS patients were subdivided on the basis of body-mass-index (BMI), into 2-subgroups (the first group was obese-PCOS with BMI ≥ 30 and the second group was non-obese PCOS MBI<30). Fasting-insulin-levels and Lipid-profile, Homeostatic-model assessment-of-insulin-resistance (HOMA-IR), follicle-stimulating-hormone (FSH), luteinizing-hormone (LH), testosterone and