Prostate Specific Antigen Levels Among Men With Prostate Cancer in Ramadi City

Prostate cancer is the most common non skin cancer in men. Screening for prostate cancer with prostate specific antigen (PSA) may help in decreasing morbidity and mortality of men.to assess the PSA level among Iraqi men in Al-Anbar governorate.Hundred and sixty two patients with prostate cancer as a study group and fifty apparently healthy subjects as a control group were included in this study from the period of 1st of June, 2007 to 1st of October, 2010. All the patients were well diagnosed clinically and by laboratory investigations by their physicians and they were on therapy. Blood samples were taken from both the study and control groups and tested for detection of PSA levels. All PSA measurements were performed in the laboratory using ELISA test. A significantly higher percentages of patients with prostate cancer had a PSA level of more than 4.0 ng/ml (79.6%) than those among apparently healthy subjects (16%)(p<0.05). Men from older age groups had higher percentage of PSA level of ≥ 4.0 ng/ml than in younger age groups. Men with older age group are more exposed to risk of prostate cancer and should be encouraged to participate in early detection studies to define personalized PSA screening that may diagnose prostate cancer at a curable point

DNA barcoding of oomycetes with cytochrome c oxidase subunit I and internal transcribed spacer

Oomycete species occupy many different environments and many ecological niches. The genera Phytophthora and Pythium for example, contain many plant pathogens which cause enormous damage to a wide range of plant species. Proper identification to the species level is a critical first step in any investigation of oomycetes, whether it is research driven or compelled by the need for rapid and accurate diagnostics during a pathogen outbreak. The use of DNA for oomycete species identification is well established, but DNA barcoding with cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) is a relatively new approach that has yet to be assessed over a significant sample of oomycete genera. In this study we have sequenced COI, from 1205 isolates representing 23 genera. A comparison to internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences from the same isolates showed that COI identification is a practical option; complementary because it uses the mitochondrial genome instead of nuclear DNA. In some cases COI was more discriminative than ITS at the species level. This is in contrast to the large ribosomal subunit, which showed poor species resolution when sequenced from a subset of the isolates used in this study. The results described in this paper indicate that COI sequencing and the dataset generated are a valuable addition to the currently available oomycete taxonomy resources, and that both COI, the default DNA barcode supported by GenBank, and ITS, the de facto barcode accepted by the oomycete and mycology community, are acceptable and complementary DNA barcodes to be used for identification of oomycetes