The Role of Anti-Thyroglobulin Antibodies in Predicting Thyroid Cancers in Patients Undergoing Thyroidectomy

Background: Preoperative prediction of thyroid malignancy can help in risk stratification and perioperative management. It has been debated that anti-thyroglobulin antibody (TgAb) are more frequently elevated in patients with thyroid cancer than in the general population. Aims: to evaluate the predictive value of TgAb in predicting thyroid cancer in patients undergoing thyroidectomy. Patients and Methods:   This is a prospective single-center study including 98 patients diagnosed with a thyroid nodule and scheduled to have a thyroidectomy. Demographic data and final histopathology reports were reported. Serum levels of TgAb were measured by ready kit using competitive radioimmunoassay. Accordingly, patients were divided into two groups: TgAb-positive and TgAb-negative groups. Results: Thyroid malignancy was reported in 18 patients (18.37%), while the other 80 patients (81.63%) were found to have benign tumors. Twenty-one patients (21.43%) were TgAb-positive and 77 (78.57%) were TgAb-negative. The frequency of positive TgAbs among patients with thyroid malignancy was 61.11% compared to 12.5% among patients with benign tumors (OR= 11.0, 95%CI= 3.46-34.96, P< 0.001). The sensitivity and specificity of TgAbs were 61.11% and 87.5% respectively. The positive and negative predictive value of TgAbs were 52.38% and 90.91%, respectively Using receiver operating characteristic curve was used to find out the cut off value of TgAb in predicting thyroid malignancy. The area under curve was 0.681, 95%CI= 0.565-0.797, p= 0.048. The sensitivity and specificity of the test at the TgAb cut off value= 114.6 U/ml was 0.35 and 0.77 respectively. Conclusions: Positive preoperative serum TgAb level was associated higher frequency of thyroid malignancy. The TgAb has poor sensitivity (61.11%) and good specificity 87.5%) in predicting thyroid malignancy in patients undergoing thyroidectomy.  Keywords: thyroid malignancy, anti-thyroglobulin antibodies, sensitivity and specificit

Evaluating Design Strategies for Nearly Zero Energy Buildings in the Middle East and North Africa Regions

There is international pressure for countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are blamed as the main cause of climate change. The countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region heavily rely on fossil fuel as the main energy source for buildings. The concept of nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB) has been defined and standardized for some developed countries. While most of the developing countries located in the MENA region with hot and tropical climate lack building energy efficiency standards. With pressure to improve energy and environmental performance of buildings, nZEB buildings are expected to grow over the coming years and employing these buildings in the MENA region can reduce building energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Therefore, the paper focuses on: (a) reviewing the current established nZEB standards and definitions for countries in the hot and warm climate of Europe, (b) investigate the primary energy consumption for current existing buildings in the MENA region, and (c) establishing a standard for nZEB and positive energy buildings in kWh/m2/year for the MENA region using a building simulation platform represented using Autodesk Insight 360. The result of the simulation reveals high energy use intensity for existing buildings in the MENA region. By improving building fabric and applying solar photovoltaics (PV) in the base model, significant reductions in primary energy consumption was achieved. Further design improvements, such as increasing the airtightness and using high efficiency solar PV, also contributed to positive energy buildings that produce more energy than they consume

Preparation, characterization and therapeutic properties of gum Arabic-stabilized gallic acid nanoparticles

Gallic acid (GA) is a natural phenolic compound with therapeutic effects that are often challenged by its rapid metabolism and clearance. Therefore, GA was encapsulated using gum arabic into nanoparticles to increase its bioavailability. The formulated nanoparticles (GANPs) were characterized for physicochemical properties and size and were then evaluated for antioxidant and antihypertensive effects using various established in vitro assays, including 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH), nitric oxide scavenging (NO), β-carotene bleaching and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitory assays. The GANPs were further evaluated for the in vitro cytotoxicity, cell uptake and cell migration in four types of human cancer cell lines including (MCF-7, MDA-MB231) breast adenocarcinoma, HepG2 hepatocellular cancer, HT-29 colorectal adenocarcinoma, and MCF-10A breast epithelial cell lines. The GANPs demonstrated potent antioxidant effects and have shown promising anti-cancer properties in a dose-dependent manner with a predilection toward HepG2 and MCF7 cancer cells. The uptake of GANPs was successful in the majority of cancer cells with a propensity to accumulate in the nuclear region of the cells. The HepG2 and MCF7 cancer cells also had a significantly higher percentage of apoptosis and were more sensitive to gallic acid nanoparticle treatment in the cell migration assay. This study is the first to confirm the synergistic effects of gum Arabic in the encapsulation of gallic acid by increasing the selectivity towards cancer cells and enhancing the antioxidant properties. The formulated nanoparticles also had remarkably low toxicity in normal cells. Based on these findings, GANPs may have promising therapeutic applications towards the development of more effective treatments with a probable targeting precision in cancer cells

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the Surface Sediments of Shatt Al-Arab River, Basrah City, Southern Iraq

Sediment samples collected from nine sampling sites along the Shatt Al-Arab River, Basrah City, Iraq were analyzed by gas chromatography-flame ionization detector in order to determine the degree and sources of PAHs contamination. The total organic carbon (TOC) content and grain size of sediments were also analyzed. The Shatt Al-Arab River sediments content of PAHs were relatively moderate compared to other  world-wide locations contaminated by oil. The total concentrations of PAHs ranged from 30.86 ng/g dry weight in the IX site to 87.79 ng/g dry weight in the VI site with highest content of PAHs were found in the Shatt Al-Arab River sediments near potential oil pollution sources, close to sites II, IV, VI, and VIII. The % TOC was varied from 0.32 to 1.64 %. The concentrations of PAHs in the Shatt Al-Arab River sediments appeared to be related to % TOC or grain size. The selected marked PAHs, the PAHs compounds ratios and the principal component analysis (PCA) suggest that the PAHs have originated from at least three different sources: (1) Pyrolytic-from different combustion processes, (2) petrogenic-from inputs petroleum and petroleum products, and (3) biogenic-from situ organisms. The potential ecosystem risk assessment indicated that PAHs will not cause immediate adverse biological effects in the Shatt Al-Arab River. Keywords: PAH compounds, Sediments, Shatt Al-Arab River, TOC, Basrah.

Manipulation of rumen fermentation and methane gas production by plant secondary metabolites (saponin, tannin and essential oil) – a review of ten-year studies

A wide range of plant secondary metabolites (PSM) have been shown to have the potential to modulate the fermentation process in the rumen. The use of plants and plant extracts as natural feed additives has become an interesting topic not only among nutritionists but also other scientists. Although a large number of phytochemicals (e.g. saponins, tannins and essential oils) have recently been investigated for their methane (CH4) reduction potential, there have not yet been major breakthroughs that could be applied in practice. However, the effectiveness of these PSM depends on the source, type and the level of their presence in plant products. The aim of the present review was to assess ruminal CH4 emission through a comparison of integrating related studies from published papers, which described various levels of different PSM sources being added to ruminant feed. Apart from CH4, other related rumen fermentation parameters were also included in this review

Prevalence of anti-BK polyomavirus IgG in A Sample of Iraqi renal transplant recipients

Background: BK virus, a human polyomavirus, causes nephropathy and allograft loss in renal transplant recipients. Although it was discovered in 1971, understanding of the humoral immune response to BKV is limited. Objective: To serological detection and level estimation of anti-BK-IgG in renal-transplanted recipients and healthy blood donors as control. Patients and Methods: Serum samples were collected from 106 renal transplant recipient patients and 100 healthy  blood donors as control groups, and were analyzed for anti-BK IgG antibodies by using quantitative and qualitative Human BK Virus IgG (BK-IgG) ELISA kit for detection and estimation positivity of BK_IgG and titration. Results: Out of 206 subjects, 114(55.3%) have a positive result for BK-IgG. seropositivity was detected in 54(50.9%) of 106 RTR patients and 60 (60.0%) in the 100 control group, so there was no significant difference between seropositivity of BKV IgG antibody among the studied groups, p =0.191. Conclusion: The highly significant differences between seropositivity of BK-IgG with high levels of serum creatinine

Bee System-based Self Configurable Optimized Resource Allocation Technique in Device-to-Device (D2D) Communication Networks

With the exponential growth of mobile devices and high capabilities of intelligence, global communication network traffic is expected to experience remarkable growth in the next few years, as it leads us to poor network experience. The Device-to-Device (D2D) is a prominent solution to further expand the user experience and network performance. To improve it many nature-inspired computing algorithms are widely used. In line with this, we use swarm-based algorithms for network performance improvement. In this paper, we propose a swarm optimization-based resource allocation methodology for Device-to-Device communication, especially since we are focusing on the Bee fly pattern to optimize the resource available resources within the network’s proximity area. Where all bees are working together to find the best optimal availability of the network’s services, hereafter mobile users get served with a respective set of resources. If the performance is not up to the pre-defined threshold value then the system adds another set of available network resources and relay nodes. It leads to relay-assisted D2D pair communication based on the Bee fly pattern. It improves the D2D mobile pair’s user experience in terms of energy, delay, and mobility support. To validate our results we compare our outcome with state-of-the-art works and provide detailed observations subject to various listed parameters