Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a prevalent clinical condition, that affects millions of individuals worldwide. Objective: To assess the level of soluble HLA-E (sHLA-E) as a biomarker in the diagnosis and immunopathogenesis of GERD patients. Methods: The case-control prospective study included 40 GERD patients who were consulted at the Gastroenterology Unit of AlKindy Teaching Hospital, as along with 40 healthy control subjects. The study period extended from January 2023 to May 2024. Blood was drawn from both groups and serum was separated to assesssHLA-E using a sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit. Results: There was a statistically significant difference in sHLA-E levels between GERD patients and healthy controls (P=0.021). The median sHLA-E level was significantly higher in GERD patients (0.370 ng/mL) compared to controls (0.148 ng/mL). A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was generated to evaluate the diagnostic performance of soluble HLA-E (sHLA-E) in predicting GERD. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) was calculated to assess the discriminatory ability of sHLA-E with a vlue of 0.649 (95% CI: 0.534-0.752, p = 0.021). The optimal cutoff value for sHLA-E was determined to be ≤0.65 ng/mL, with a sensitivity of 85.1%, specificity of 27.3%, positive predictive value of 65.9%, negative predictive value of 69.4%, and accuracy of 35.0%. Conclusion: The study provides evidence of an association between elevated sHLA-E levels and GERD. It also suggests that sHLA-E has a moderate discriminatory ability as a biomarker in predicting GERD. © 2025, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved.
An excellent reputation earned by initiating and practicing sustainable business practices has additional benefits, of which are reducing environmental incidents and an improvement in operational efficiency as this has the potential to help firms improve on productivity and bring down operating costs. Taken further, with ever-increasing socially and environmentally-conscious investors and the public alike, this act of natural resources management could have a significant implication on market value and income of the practicing firms.
The above proposition has been supported by sustainable business practices literature that is continuously conversing and deliberating upon the impact of efficient resource d
... Show MoreCredit card fraud has become an increasing problem due to the growing reliance on electronic payment systems and technological advances that have improved fraud techniques. Numerous financial institutions are looking for the best ways to leverage technological advancements to provide better services to their end users, and researchers used various protection methods to provide security and privacy for credit cards. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the challenges and the proposed solutions to address them. This review provides an overview of the most recent research on the detection of fraudulent credit card transactions to protect those transactions from tampering or improper use, which includes imbalance classes, c
... Show MoreBeing the meeting points of the world different languages and out of a scholarly perspective, comparative literature represents a cultural leap as well as an artistic and intellectual development or a global literary movement of both prose and poetry. Such homogenous literary structure requires a systematic and coherent study of the literary output of the people different cultures and civilizations. It also represents the theoretical approach of the present study that debates a systematic comparison between Ghassan Kanafani’s All That's Left to You and William Faulkner’s. The Sound and the Fury. Within the perspective of the descriptive analysis approach, the present paper discusses th
... Show MoreInformation pollution is regarded as a big problem facing journalists working in the editing section, whereby journalistic materials face such pollution through their way across the editing pyramid. This research is an attempt to define the concept of journalistic information pollution, and what are the causes and sources of this pollution. The research applied the descriptive research method to achieve its objectives. A questionnaire was used to collect data. The findings indicate that journalists are aware of the existence of information pollution in journalism, and this pollution has its causes and resources.