Background In pandemic COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the prognosis of patients has been determined using clinical data and CT (computed tomography) scans, but it is still unclear whether chest ...CT characteristics are correlated to COVID-19 severity. Aim To explore the potential association between clinical data and 25-point CT score and investigate their predictive significance in COVID-19-positive patients at Fayoum University Hospital in Egypt. Methods This study was conducted on 252 Egyptian COVID-19 patients at Fayoum University Hospital in Egypt. The patients were classified into two groups: a mild group (174 patients) and a severe group (78 patients). The results of clinical laboratory data, and CT scans of severe and mild patients, were collected, analyzed, and compared. Results The severe group show high significance levels of CRP, alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), creatinine, urea, ferritin, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), neutrophil percent, and heart rate (HR) than the mild group. Lymphopenia, hypoalbuminemia, hypocalcemia, and decreased oxygen saturation (SpO2) were the most observed abnormalities in severe COVID-19 patients. Lymphopenia, low SpO2 and albumin levels, elevated serum LDH, ferritin, urea, and CRP levels were found to be significantly correlated with severity CT score (P<0.0001). Conclusion The clinical severity of COVID-19 and the CT score are highly correlated. Our findings indicate that the CT scoring system can help to predict COVID-19 disease outcomes and has a strong correlation with clinical laboratory testing.
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a serious illness caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and in severe cases associated with acute respiratory distress syndrome ...(ARDS).
To describe the clinical characteristics of patients with ARDS-COVID-19.
This study involved 197 male Egyptian participants, among them111 COVID-19 patients presented with ARDS, 60 COVID-19 patients presented with non-ARDS, and 26 Non-COVID-19 patients. We reported the analysis results of clinical and laboratory information, including blood routine tests, blood biochemistry parameters aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), creatinine and C-reactive protein (CRP), thrombotic activity (D-dimer) and serum ferritin and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH).
The levels of hemoglobin, AST, creatinine, monocyte count, monocyte %, RBC count, TLC, and platelet count were not significantly different among the groups. The lymphopenia and increased CRP, ALT, D-dimer, ferritin, and LDH were observed in patients with ARDS-COVID-19.
COVID-19 patients with ARDS presented with lymphopenia, increased thrombotic activity, increased CRP, LDH, and ferritin levels. The results revealed that CRP, D-dimer, LDH levels, and lymphopenia have a significant association with the COVID-19 severity and can be used as biomarkers to predict the disease severity.
Problems of energy and fresh water shortage become hard challenges facing survival of the human beings. Egypt especially is facing increasing of water supply challenges due to population growth. In ...this study, a new proposed solar adsorption desalination-cooling (ADC) system is designed, built, and tested under Egypt's climate conditions. A commercially available silica gel of about 13.5 kg is used. The Adsorption characteristics of the selected silica gel-water pair are evaluated firstly to design the proposed system. In addition, a theoretical dynamic model is developed to predict the system performance. A good agreement is found between the theoretical and experimental results under different Egypt climate conditions. The results show that, the average specific cooling power is 112 W/kg and average specific daily water production is 4 m3 per ton silica gel with a COP of 0.45. Based on the obtained results, ADC system driven by solar energy proven to be an adequate solution to offer proper alternative to the traditional desalination systems and have promising future in Egypt's climate. However, studies about improving the performance of such system and new designs are still needed.
•Adsorption isotherms and kinetics of silica gel-water have been investigated.•An Adsorption desalination system is studied theoretically using a MATALB code.•A test rig for an adsorption desalination cooling system is designed and built.•The system is powered by solar energy at Egyptian weather.•Experimental results have been validated with the theoretical model.
Adsorption-based desalination attracted increasingly attention due to its ability to co-generate double distilled fresh water and cooling effect using only one heat input. The system employs a ...combination of flash evaporation and thermal compression. This paper presents the current literature review on the dual effect (cooling and desalination) adsorption desalination system (ADS), which is an emerging process of thermal desalination with cooling utilizing low-grade heat source. The paper also presents the adsorbents suitable for adsorption–desalination systems, performance of ADS, and the thermodynamic analysis of the adsorption desalination cycle. A comparison between the stated ADS has been also presented in this study.
Globally, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the second most common cause of cancer-related death due to a lack of early predictive and/or diagnostic tools. Thus, research for a new biomarker is ...important. LncRNAs play a functional role in target gene regulation and their deregulation is associated with several pathological conditions including HCC.
This study aimed to explore the diagnostic potential of two LncRNAs MALAT1 and CASC2 in HCC compared to the routinely used diagnostic biomarker.
The current study is a case-control study carried out at Fayoum University Hospital and conducted on 89 individuals. The study included three groups of 36 HCC patients on top of HCV(HCC/HCV), 33 HCV patients, and 20 healthy volunteers as a control group. All study subjects were subjected to radiological examinations. The determination of CBC was performed by the automated counter and liver function tests by the enzymatic method were performed. In addition, HCV RNA quantification and the expression level of two LncRNAs (MALAT1 and CASC2) were performed by qRT-PCR.
The results revealed a statistically significant difference between study groups regarding liver function tests with a higher mean in HCC/HCV group. Also, serum MALAT1 significantly up-regulated in HCV (11.2±2.8) and HCC/HCV (4.56±1.4) compared to the control group. Besides, serum CASC2 levels in the HCV group were significantly upregulated (14.9±3.6), while, downregulated in the HCC group (0.16± 0.03). Furthermore, The ROC analysis for diagnostic efficacy parameters indicated that CASC2 has higher accuracy (94.6%) and sensitivity (97.2%) for HCC diagnosis than AFP with an accuracy of (90.9%), sensitivity (69.4%), and MALAT1 showed an accuracy of (56.9%), sensitivity (72.2%).
Our study results indicated that CASC2 is a promising biomarker and is considered better and could help in HCC diagnosis on top of HCV than MALAT1 and the routine biomarker AFP.
Spectrum congestion has motivated the recent introduction of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems where radar and communications functionalities co-exist and share the same spectrum. ...This is accompanied by extensive research in the area of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), thanks to their ability to improve the ISAC systems. In this paper, the physical layer security of a multiuser multiple-input single-output (MU-MISO) ISAC system is investigated when the system is subject to eavesdropping by a malicious unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). In particular, we propose using an active RIS to maximize the achievable secrecy rate of the system through jointly designing the radar receive beamformers, the active RIS reflection coefficients matrix and the transmit beamformers at the dual-function base station of the ISAC system. This is done while taking into account a minimum radar detection signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and total system power budget constraints. The resulting non-convex optimization problem is tackled by exploiting fractional programming (FP) and majorization-minimization (MM) techniques to achieve a solution. Our numerical results show the superiority of active RIS to achieve the goal when compared with passive RIS or with an ISAC without an RIS. Results also show that passive RIS could still be a viable solution to achieve this goal but at the expense of a much larger needed size especially when lower power budgets are available.
In this paper, we develop an efficient finite difference/spectral method to solve a coupled system of nonlinear multi-term time-space fractional diffusion equations. In general, the solutions of such ...equations typically exhibit a weak singularity at the initial time. Based on the
L
1 formula on nonuniform meshes for time stepping and the Legendre–Galerkin spectral method for space discretization, a fully discrete numerical scheme is constructed. Taking into account the initial weak singularity of the solution, the convergence of the method is proved. The optimal error estimate is obtained by providing a generalized discrete form of the fractional Grönwall inequality which enables us to overcome the difficulties caused by the sum of Caputo time-fractional derivatives and and the positivity of the reaction term over the nonuniform time mesh. The error estimate reveals how to select an appropriate mesh parameter to obtain the temporal optimal convergence. Furthermore, numerical experiments are presented to confirm the theoretical claims.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a severe autoimmune inflammation that mostly affects the joints. It's a multifactorial disease. Its clinical picture depends on genetic and epigenetic factors such as ...miRNAs. The miRNAs are small noncoding molecules that are able to negatively or positively modulate their target gene expression. In RA, miRNAs are linked to its pathogenesis. They disrupt immunity balance by controlling granulocytes, triggering the release of several proinflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor-α, finally leading to synovium hyperplasia and inflammation. Besides, they also may trigger activation of some pathways as nuclear factor kappa-β disrupts the balance between osteoclast and osteoblast activity, leading to increased bone destruction. Moreover, miRNAs are also applied with efficiency in RA diagnosis and prognosis. Besides the significant association between miRNAs and RA response to treatment, they are also applied as a choice for treatment based on their effects on the immune system and inflammatory cytokines. Hence, the review aims to present an updated overview of miRNAs, their biogenesis, implications in RA pathogenesis, and finally, the role of miRNAs in RA treatment.
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•RA patients have altered miRNA expression in many tissues and cells.•miRNAs are critically involved in both immune function and inflammatory processes.•RA’ aberrant miRNA expression may contribute to its inflammatory etiology.•miRNAs may serve as novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets for RA.
Diabetes mellitus is usually accompanied by nephropathy, retinopathy, and neuropathy as microvascular complications. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) can affect the kidney, retina, and peripheral neurons through ...their implication in pathways involved in angiogenesis, inflammation, apoptosis, as well as fibrosis within these tissues and hence, play a crucial role in the pathogenesis of microvascular complications. In this review, the updated knowledge of the role of miRNAs in the pathogenesis of diabetic microvascular complications was summarized. PubMed Central was searched extensively to retrieve data from a wide range of reputable biomedical reports/articles published after the year 2000 to systematically collect and present a review of the key molecular pathways mediating the hyperglycemia-induced adverse effects on vascular tissues, particularly in persons with T2DM. In the present review, miR-126, miR-29b, and miR-125a are implicated in diabetes-induced microvascular complications, while miR-146a is found to be connected to all these complications. Also, vascular endothelial growth factors are noted to be the most impacted targets by miRNAs in all diabetic microvascular problems.
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•We update miRNAs' role in diabetic microvascular complications.•miRNAs serve a critical role in regulation of many biological processes in diabetes.•miRNAs have appeared as novel diabetic biomarkers and a possible therapeutic target.
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