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Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic, systemic, destructive joint disease. Vitamin D initiates biological responses via binding to the vitamin D receptor (VDR), which is a member of the steroid hormone receptor superfamily located on chromosome 12 (12q12-q14) that regulates gene expression in a ligand-dependent manner. The receptor (VDR) is active in almost all tissues that are necessary for the effects of vitamin D. Objective: The present work aimed to detect vitamin D receptor FokI gene polymorphism in rheumatoid arthritis patients, to assess its role as a risk factor of the disease. Patients and Methods: A case-control study was conducted on 44 subjects (22 RA patients and 22 apparently normal volunteers age and sex-matched with patients) at the Clinical Pathology, Rheumatology and Rehabilitation Departments, Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University. Results: Serum vitamin D level was found to be significantly lower among RA patients compared to healthy controls. There was a significant difference between the studied groups regarding VDR FOK1 gene polymorphism and its alleles. There was a non-significant difference between the different genotypes regarding age, however, the difference between them was significant regarding sex as it was noticed that FF and ff homozygous genotypes were found only in females compared to their male counterparts while Ff heterozygous genotype was found equally among both males and females. Conclusion: Vitamin D receptor gene FokI polymorphism could be considered as genetic risk markers of RA susceptibility, associated with vitamin D level deficiency which was found to be significantly lower among FF genotype compared to other genotypes. Having FF and Ff genotypes have almost a higher risk than having ff genotype to be RA patient.

Background: Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) has been afflicting humankind as far back as ancient Egypt. Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) appears to have the unique ability to drive both inflammation and new bone formation and could play an important role in the pathogenesis of AS. Objective: The study aimed to evaluate MIF as a diagnostic biomarker in AS. Patients and Methods: This study was conducted on 42 subjects; 21 AS cases and 21 controls. Patients were subjected to full medical history, general and musculoskeletal examinations, laboratory investigations including serum MIF level, sacroiliac X-ray, sacroiliac MRI with the Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Score (ASDAS) for disease activity. Results: Regarding gender of the patients, the majority (71.4%) of patients were males; while (28.6 %) were females. We found that; the mean disease duration of AS patients was (15.05 ± 6.69) years; while the mean ASDAS score was (2.78 ± 0.68). We also found that, (71.4%) of AS patients received NSAIDs, (95.2%) received disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), (57.1%) received tumour necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi). Regarding imaging findings in our study, (61.9 %) of AS patients had sacroiliitis in sacroiliac X-ray while (100 %) of AS patients had sacroiliitis in sacroiliac MRI. Conclusion: Serum MIF levels are elevated in AS patients. ROC-curve analysis showed that the best cutoff point of MIF was (>41.3) with area under curve (0.625), with fair accuracy (57.1%), sensitivity (80%) and specificity (50%).

It would be rational to describe the pattern of the clinical characteristics of the survivors and the nonsurvivors during the critical intensive-infection era of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The explicit objective of the current scoping review was to delineate the predictive risk factors associated with case fatality rate (CFR).Six retrospective studies of subjects infected with COVID-19 published between December 1, 2020, and March 30, 2020, describing nonsurvivors in Wuhan/Hubei, China, were identified.There were 1769 subjects with a mean age of 52 years, and 65.9% were male. The highest comorbidity reported was cardiovascular diseases at 22.2% (393/1769). The overall number of cases admitted to the intensive care unit was 228 (12.9%). The reported overall CFR was 7.7% (136/1769), with the highest at 28.2% (54/191), and the lowest at 1.4% (15/1099). The mean duration of onset until death for nonsurvivors was 15.3 days.We have found that older age, male gender, the longer duration from onset till death (days), development of acute respiratory distress syndrome/shock, preexisting diabetes, and preexisting cardiovascular diseases were the major risk factors associated with high CFR.

The impact of climate on crop production has vital importance. Climate variables affect the different crops during different stages of the growth and the development. This research aims to study the environmental factors affecting the growth and production of barley (Hordeum Sp., Gramineae) in a hydroponic system, to provide information to farmers and decision makers by using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) Model for production prediction. Multilayer feed-forward ANN (fully connected) was used in supervised manner and the training method was the back-propagation algorithm by using MATLAB program. The inputs in the ANN model of barley were: seeds density (kg/m2), lighting duration (h/day), light intensity (Lux), temperature (co), relative humidity (%) and growing period (days). The outputs were: plant length (cm), yield (kg/m2), protein (%), dry matter (%), and conversion factor. Results revealed that the optimal configuration for the ANN model consisted of four layers (6-25-30-5). The hidden layers had 25 and 30 nodes in the first and second hidden layers respectively for the ANN model. Hyperbolic tangent transfer function was employed in hidden and output layers of the ANN model. The learning rate and the momentum parameter were 0.005 and 0.9 respectively for the ANN model. Iterations were 10000 epochs during training process for the ANN model. The results showed that the variation between target and predicted outputs was small while the correlation coefficient (R) was 0.99. Also, the results revealed that the major parameters affecting on all the outputs were seeds density and the duration of the lighting followed by the other factors i.e. temperature (co), relative humidity (%), growing period (days) and light intensity (Lux). Seeds density has a higher percent relative importance, on yield, plant length, protein (%), DM (%) and conversion factor equal to 22.8%, 24%, 25%, 24% and 22.8% respectively. The developed ANN model was beneficial tool for barley production prediction. The barley yield prediction could be helpful for farmers, decision makers and planning to manage their crop better by providing a series of recommendations about crops planting and clarifying its impact on changes to these factors under the study in order to avoid losses and reach the best benefit (maximization of yield).

Background: Medical students, interns and residents at all levels needs a boost dose of simple plan and exemplified written format to participate in medical (clinical/toxicological) research. Aim: Herein, we aim to provide "critical points to take into account when developing a research from the idea to the final publication". This will guide those who need to delve deeper the clinical research panorama and write a clinical research paper. Methods: We have performed a review on available tools that provide information on how to conduct a research study and develop a manuscript intended for publication. In order to initiate any clinical research activity, an initial assessment of the current routine clinical practice is a pre-requisite to conceive and design the research. In "Introduction", a clinical researcher should inform the readers about the clinical implications of the study and should anticipate new practices. The author should also bring the statistical outputs in organized predefined titled tables, no matter how many initially; however, later may deduce to the minimum number of tables. Results: The researcher or investigator should provide anticipated results for the proposed protocol and detailed results for the manuscript. The initial results are the demographics and past medical/medication/ morbidities. Then should narrow down more specific to the main findings. Each results illustrated in tables should stands as the discussion area. Therefore, tables must follow an uphill fashion and upward direction to the final conclusions. Discussions: The tip of the iceberg is the main findings and