Study of the Urinary Ratio of 6 β-Hydroxycortisol/Cortisol as a Biomarker of CYP3A4 Activity in Egyptian Patients with Chronic Liver Diseases

The urinary ratio of 6 β-hydroxycortisol/cortisol (6 β-OHC/C) as a biomarker of CYP3A4 metabolizing activity has been studied in Egyptian patients with chronic liver cirrhosis associated with previous hepatic Schistosomiasis infection to determine any possible alteration in enzyme activity. The ratio of 6-β OHC/C was determined in morning urine samples collected from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in healthy adults (n = 36) and patients with liver cirrhosis (n = 57). The median age for control was 27 years (range: 18–50 years) and 50 years (range: 27–75 years) for patients. 6 β-OHC was detected in urine by ELIZA kits (Stabiligen, France). Patients with liver cirrhosis were categorized according to Child Pugh Classification into Child B (n = 28) and Child C (n = 29) classes. Cholestasis was observed in 9/28 of Child B class and 8/29 of Child C class of patients. The control subjects showed gender-related difference in the urinary ratio of 6 β-OHC/C. A significant reduction (P < 0.001) in 6 β-OHC/C ratio was observed only in Child C patients in comparison with control subjects. Regression analysis showed a significant correlation (P < 0.05) between 6 β-OHC/C ratio and serum albumin. The influence of cholestasis on the urinary ratio of 6-β OHC/C was observed on cirrhotic patients of Child B class. In conclusion, patients with chronic liver cirrhosis might have a reduction of metabolizing activity of CYP3A4 enzymes which could be identified by measuring the urinary ratio of 6 β-OHC/C. This reduction is more apparent in severe liver injury (Child C class). Therefore, it is important to understand the metabolic fate of drugs metabolized by 3A4 enzymes in patients with liver cirrhosis to avoid drug accumulation that might lead to development of drug toxicity

Arabic learner corpus (ALC) v2: a new written and spoken corpus of Arabic learners

Arabic learner corpora have not received enough attention, particularly for learning Arabic as a second language (in Arabic speaking countries). Based on the literature, there are a few projects are developing Arabic learner corpora, of which most are not freely available for users or researchers. In addition to that they are intended to assist in the language acquisition of Arabic as a foreign language (collected from learners studying Arabic in non-Arabic speaking countries). The present paper aims to introduce the Arabic Learner Corpus. It is being developed at Leeds University, and comprises of 282,732 words, collected from learners of Arabic in Saudi Arabia. The corpus includes written and spoken data produced by 942 students, from 67 different nationalities studying at pre-university and university levels. The paper focuses on two angles of this corpus; the design criteria and the content. The design criteria of the ALC discuss the target language, the participants, the corpus size, the materials included, the method of data collection, the metadata of the corpus materials and contributors, and text distribution. The second part, ALC content, is illustrated based on 26 elements representing the corpus metadata. The goal of the ALC is to provide an open-source of data for some linguistic research areas related to Arabic language learning and teaching. So, the corpus data is available for download in TXT and XML formats, hand-written sheets which are in PDF format as well as the audio recordings which are available in MP3 format