Gastroprotective and Immuno-supportive Role of Alcea kurdica against Stress Induced Lesion in Japanese Quails

تم اجراء الدراسة في حقل كردة رشة (جامعة صلاح الدين) ولمدة شهر ليقارن تأثير كل من مساحيق A.kurdica و Rifaxmine وRanitidine كمواد المعدي والمدعوم للمناعة للمسان المعرض للإجهاد والتي يأثر علي معدل النمو نتيجة تأكل الحويصلات والآفات المعوية . تم اجراء الدراسة على 75 طير سمان (عمرها 12 أسبوعًا) في ستة معاملات أذ قسمت إلى: = (T0-) تحكم سلبي بدون علاج، (T0 +) = تحكم إيجابي (لا يوجد إجهاد أو علاج (T1)   معالج بـ Rifaximine 200mg / L ماء مختلط،= (T2)  معالج بـ Ranitidine 200mg/l)  = (T3), تمت معالجته بمستخلص ⸲A.kurdica 100mg / L  تم غمر المجموعات المختبرة باستثناء مجموعة التحكم الإيجابية في ماء الصنبور باردة (17 درجة مئوية) كمحفز للتوتر. أظهر التحليل المجهري أن السمان المعالج مسبقًا بمستخلص A.kurdica (T3) كان له تأثير معنوي (p<0.05)  في طبقة قوانص كويلين أقل اضطرابا من تلك الخاصة بمجموعات T1 و T2 و T0 على التوالي. علاوة على ذلك، أشارت نتائج Eliza إلى زيادة عيار الأجسام المضادة ضد فيروسات ND وIBD و IB لمجموعات T3 مع زيادة HDL بشكل ملحوظ وانخفاض LDL و VLDL و TCHO لـ T3 مقارنة بمجموعات T1 و T2 و T0 + T0 على التوالي. أظهر مستخلص نبات A.kurdica الممزوج بالماء تأثيرات إيجابية على وزن الجسم ، وخصائص الدهون ، والحالة المناعية ، وتقليل تآكل قوانص في السمان، والذي يمكن اعتباره نباتًا طبيًا وكذلك عاملًا يعزز النمو في صناعة الدواجن.      The conducted research was done in Grda rasha field (Salahaddin University) for one month to compare the impacts of Alcea kurdica powder, Rifaxmine, and Ranitidine as anti-lesion and immune-strengthening agents on stress-induced quails which are affecting their growth rate and in severe cases causing gizzard erosion and deep intestinal lesions. To do that, 75 quails (12 weeks old) were grouped into six treatments with different additives. (T0-) = Negative control (Stress-induced Without treatment), (T0+) = Positive control (No stress inducing or treatment). T1= (treated with Rifaximine 200mg/L water mixed), T2= (treated with Ranitidine 200mg/L), T3= (treated with A.kurdica extract 100mg/L). The tested groups, except for positive control, were immersed in tap cold water (17°C) as a stress-induced technique. The Macroscopic analysis showed that quails pre-treated with A.kurdica extract (T3) had significantly (p<0.05) lower relative gizzard koilin layer disruption than those of T1, T2, and T0- groups, respectively. Moreover, the Elisa results indicated higher antibody titers against ND, IBD, and IB viruses for the T3 group with significantly increased HDL and lowered LDL, VLDL, and TCHO for T3 than that of T1, T2, T0+ T0- groups, respectively. Water mixed A.kurdica extract showed positive influences on the body weight, lipid profile, immune status and minimized gizzard erosions of breeding quails, which can be considered as a medicinal plant as well as a growth-enhancing agent in the poultry industry

Impaired bone marrow homing of cytokine-activated CD34⁺ cells in the NOD/SCID model

The reduced engraftment potential of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) after exposure to cytokines may be related to the impaired homing ability of actively cycling cells. We tested this hypothesis by quantifying the short-term horning of human adult CD34+ cells in nonobese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficient (NOD/SCID) animals. We show that the loss of engraftment ability of cytokine-activated CD34+ cells is associated with a reduction in homing of colony-forming cells (CFCs) to bone marrow (BM) at 24 hours after transplantation (from median 2.8% [range, 1.9%-6.1%] to 0.3% [0.0%-0.7%]; n = 3; P < .01), coincident with an increase in CFC accumulation in the lungs (P < .01). Impaired BM homing of cytokine-activated cells was not restored by using sorted cells in G 0G1 or by inducing cell cycle arrest at the G 1/S border. Blocking Fas ligation in vivo did not increase the BM homing of cultured cells. Finally, we tested cytokine combinations or culture conditions previously reported to restore the engraftment of cultured cells but did not find that any of these was able to reverse the changes in homing behavior of cytokine-exposed cells. We suggest that these changes in homing and, as a consequence, engraftment result from the increased migratory capacity of infused activated cells, leading to the loss of selectivity of the homing process. © 2004 by The American Society of Hematology

Evaluation of acute toxicity and anti-inflammatory effects of Baccharoides schimperi (DC.) in experimental animals

Background: Steroidal and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are most commonly used to treat inflammation, and shown to have severe side effects. In this study, we aimed at evaluating the anti-inflammatory and acute toxicity effects of Baccharoides schimperi (DC.) in order to get new anti-inflammatory agents of natural origin.Materials and methods: The aerial part of the plant was dried under shade, ground and extracted with 96% alcohol (BSE). It was further fractionated in sequence to n-hexane (BSH), chloroform (BSC) and methanol (BSM) soluble fractions. Acute toxicity was evaluated by oral administration of plant and hind paw induced-edema method in rats was used for the anti-inflammatory evaluation.Results: The BSE was found safe up to the dose level of 3 g/kg b.w. and showed LD50 value 7.250 g/kg body weight (b.w.) in mice. BSE showed significant anti-inflammatory effect (62.91%) at 500 mg/kg b.w. Further the n-hexane, chloroform and methanol fractions of BSE were tested for antiinflammatory activity. The n-hexane fraction (BSH) exhibits significant activity (64.87%) at 400 mg/kg b.w. The methanol fraction (BSM) showed dose dependent activity, highest activity (60.42%) was observed at higher  dose 400 of mg/kg b.w. In chloroform fraction (BSC) no significant activitywas observed.Conclusion: The results of the study revealed that the plant is safe to the experimental model and recommended as a potential source of antiinflammatory agent.Key words: Acute toxicity, anti-inflammatory activity, Baccharoide schimperi (DC.

The Opinion and Awareness of Citizens on the Commitment of Bakers, Butchers, and Food Sellers to Health Instructions and their Application during COVID-19 Outbreak

Many countries follow the recommendation of the World Health Organization (WHO) by practicing physical gathering avoidance as one health measure to decrease COVID-19 the spread. The current study identifies the opinions and awareness of citizens about the commitments of workers (bakers, butchers, and food sellers) to health instructions and prevention. This descriptive cross-sectional study was done in different premises in Kurdistan Region-Iraq from 20.9.2021 to 20.4.2022 using online platforms and printed forms. The study included socio-demographic characteristics, citizens' opinions, and commitment related-questions. A thousand copies were collected and analyzed. The results showed that the majority of citizens have positive opinions and awareness and agreed that workers (bakers, butchers, and food sellers) are committed to COVID-19 regulations. There was a significant correlation between the variables of opinions and awareness of the commitments of workers to the prevention of COVID-19. All professional workers have a good obligation to prevention from COVID-19 so that the population in the Erbil city has accepted those workers to deal with food and meat and with complete prevention from Covid-19. These perfect commitments of workers to prevention may help to break down the chain of COVID-19 infection which consequently reduces mortality and morbidity rate

Double-Lepton Polarization Asymmetries and Branching Ratio in B \rar K_{0}^{*}(1430) l^+ l^- transition from Universal Extra Dimension Model

We investigate the B \rar K_{0}^{*}(1430) l^+ l^- transition in the Applequist-Cheng-Dobrescu model in the presence of a universal extra dimension. In particular, we calculate double lepton polarization asymmetries and branching ratio related to this channel and compare the obtained results with the predictions of the standard model. Our analysis of the considered observables in terms of radius $R$ of the compactified extra-dimension as the new parameter of the model show a considerable discrepancy between the predictions of two models in low $\frac{1}{R}$ values.Comment: 12 Pages, 15 Figures and 1 Tabl

A critical look at studies applying over-sampling on the TPEHGDB dataset

Preterm birth is the leading cause of death among young children and has a large prevalence globally. Machine learning models, based on features extracted from clinical sources such as electronic patient files, yield promising results. In this study, we review similar studies that constructed predictive models based on a publicly available dataset, called the Term-Preterm EHG Database (TPEHGDB), which contains electrohysterogram signals on top of clinical data. These studies often report near-perfect prediction results, by applying over-sampling as a means of data augmentation. We reconstruct these results to show that they can only be achieved when data augmentation is applied on the entire dataset prior to partitioning into training and testing set. This results in (i) samples that are highly correlated to data points from the test set are introduced and added to the training set, and (ii) artificial samples that are highly correlated to points from the training set being added to the test set. Many previously reported results therefore carry little meaning in terms of the actual effectiveness of the model in making predictions on unseen data in a real-world setting. After focusing on the danger of applying over-sampling strategies before data partitioning, we present a realistic baseline for the TPEHGDB dataset and show how the predictive performance and clinical use can be improved by incorporating features from electrohysterogram sensors and by applying over-sampling on the training set

Phytochemical profile, Antioxidant, Enzyme inhibitory and acute toxicity activity of Astragalus bruguieri

 تم استخدام النباتات الطبية (أنواع استراغالوس) تقليديًا كمضاد للالتهابات ومضاد للأكسدة ومضاد لمرضى السكر. يبحث البحث الحالي في الكيمياء النباتية وبعض النشاط البيولوجي لمستخلص الميثانول لأجزاء مختلفة من Astragalus bruguieri Bioss.، وهو نبات طبي بري ينمو في جبل سفين، أربيل، العراق. تم تحليل المستخلصات الميثانولية للنبات A. bruguieri لمعرفة محتويات الفينول والفلافونويد والسابونين. تم تحليل نشاط مضادات الأكسدة في المختبر بواسطة مقايسات 2،2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) و2،2'azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS). علاوة على ذلك، تم فحص المستخلصات النباتية لمعرفة النشاط المثبط للإنزيم المختبري والسمية شبه الحادة في الجسم الحي. أظهرت النتائج أعلى محتوى إجمالي من الفينول (28.83، 20.62 مجم GAEs / جم) في الأوراق والجذور على التوالي. بينما وجد أعلى محتوى إجمالى من الفلافونويد (50.08، 44.01 مجم REs / جم) في الأجزاء الهوائية والأوراق على التوالي. كان إجمالي الصابونين أكثر انتشارًا (25.33، 23.18 مجم من مستخلص GAEs / جم) في الجذور والأجزاء الهوائية، على التوالي. أظهر قياس نشاط مضادات الأكسدة في المختبر بواسطة مقايسة (DPPH) أن الأوراق كجزء متفوق في هذا النشاط (42.19   mg مستخلص TEs / g)، بينما أشار تقييم مضادات الأكسدة بواسطة مقايسة (ABTS) إلى أن الجذور هي الجزء الأكثر نشاطًا (86.90   mg TEs / مستخلص ز). تم العثور على α-glucosidase وα-amylase لتكون 0.45-0.67 و1.2-1.8 مللي مول ACAEs / جم على التوالي. أشار اختبار السمية الفموية الحادة إلى سلامة جرعة 600 مجم / كجم لأجزاء مختلفة من A. bruguieri على الجرذان البيضاء دون حدوث خلل سلوكي أو الموت. تعتبر الدراسة الحالية أول تقرير عن A. bruguieri كمصدر جديد محتمل للمواد المتوافقة حيويًا للعديد من المنتجات الصناعية.The medicinal plants (Astragalus species) have been used traditionally as anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and Anti-diabetics. The current research investigates the phytochemistry and some biological activity of methanol extract of different parts of Astragalus bruguieri Bioss., a wild medicinal plant grows on Safeen mountain, Erbil, Iraq. The methanol extracts of A. bruguieri were analyzed for total phenolic, flavonoid, and saponin contents. In-vitro antioxidant activity was analyzed by 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2,2'-azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) assays. Furthermore, the plant extracts were examined for in-vitro enzyme inhibitory activity and in-vivo sub-acute toxicity. The results have shown the highest total phenolic (28.83, 20.62 mg GAEs/g extracts) contents, in the leave and root extracts, respectively. While the highest total Flavonoid (50.08, 44.01 mg REs/g) contents, were found in the extracts of aerial parts and leaves, respectively. The total saponin was higher (25.33, 23.18 mg GAEs/g extracts) in the roots and aerial parts, respectively. In-vitro antioxidant   measurement by (DPPH) assay showed leaves as superior part in this activity (42.19mg TEs/g extract), while antioxidant evaluation by (ABTS) assay indicated roots as the most active part (86.90mg TEs/g extract). The α-glucosidase and α-amylase inhibitory activity were found as 0.45-0.67, and 1.2-1.8 mmol ACAEs/g, respectively. The oral acute toxicity test indicated the safety of 600mg/kg dosage of different parts of A. bruguieri on albino rats without behavioral abnormality or mortality. The current study is considered as the first report on the A. bruguieri as a possible new source of biocompatible material for many industrial products

The effect of MgO/TiO2 on structural and crystallization behavior of near invert phosphate-based glasses

Varying formulations in the glass system of 40P2 O5 ─(24 - x)MgO─(16 + x)CaO─(20 - y)Na2 O─yTiO2 (where 0 ≤ x ≤ 22 and y = 0 or 1) were prepared via melt-quenching. The structure of the glasses was confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), micro Raman and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopies. The thermal properties and the activation energy of crystallization (Ec ) were measured using thermal analysis and the Kissinger equation, respectively. The glass forming ability of the formulations investigated was seen to decrease with reducing MgO content down to 8 mol% and the glass stability region also decreased from 106 to 90°C with decreasing MgO content. The activation energy of crystallization (Ec ) values also decreased from 248 (for 24 mol% MgO glass) to 229 kJ/mol (for the 8 mol% MgO content) with the replacement of MgO by CaO for glasses with no TiO2 . The formulations containing less than 8 mol% MgO without TiO2 showed a strong tendency toward crystallization. However, the addition of 1 mol% TiO2 in place of Na2 O for these glasses with less than 8 mol% MgO content, inhibited their crystallization tendency. Glasses containing 8 mol% MgO with 1 mol% TiO2 revealed a 12°C higher glass transition temperature, a 14°C increase in glass stability against crystallization and a 38 kJ/mol increase in Ec in comparison to their non TiO2 containing counterpart. NMR spectroscopy revealed that all of the formulations contained almost equal percentages of Q1 and Q2 species. However, FTIR and Raman spectroscopies showed that the local structure of the glasses had been altered with addition of 1 mol% TiO2 , which acted as a network modifier, impeding crystallization by increasing the cross-linking between phosphate chains and consequently leading to increased Ec as well as their glass forming ability

Genetic Affinities within a Large Global Collection of Pathogenic Leptospira: Implications for Strain Identification and Molecular Epidemiology

Leptospirosis is an important zoonosis with widespread human health implications. The non-availability of accurate identification methods for the individualization of different Leptospira for outbreak investigations poses bountiful problems in the disease control arena. We harnessed fluorescent amplified fragment length polymorphism analysis (FAFLP) for Leptospira and investigated its utility in establishing genetic relationships among 271 isolates in the context of species level assignments of our global collection of isolates and strains obtained from a diverse array of hosts. In addition, this method was compared to an in-house multilocus sequence typing (MLST) method based on polymorphisms in three housekeeping genes, the rrs locus and two envelope proteins. Phylogenetic relationships were deduced based on bifurcating Neighbor-joining trees as well as median joining network analyses integrating both the FAFLP data and MLST based haplotypes. The phylogenetic relationships were also reproduced through Bayesian analysis of the multilocus sequence polymorphisms. We found FAFLP to be an important method for outbreak investigation and for clustering of isolates based on their geographical descent rather than by genome species types. The FAFLP method was, however, not able to convey much taxonomical utility sufficient to replace the highly tedious serotyping procedures in vogue. MLST, on the other hand, was found to be highly robust and efficient in identifying ancestral relationships and segregating the outbreak associated strains or otherwise according to their genome species status and, therefore, could unambiguously be applied for investigating phylogenetics of Leptospira in the context of taxonomy as well as gene flow. For instance, MLST was more efficient, as compared to FAFLP method, in clustering strains from the Andaman island of India, with their counterparts from mainland India and Sri Lanka, implying that such strains share genetic relationships and that leptospiral strains might be frequently circulating between the islands and the mainland