عماد صادق علي الحلي

Significant increase in bacterial resistance to the third generation cephalosporins and these same third-generation resistant strains are based on many other types of antibiotics, which makes it difficult to determine effective treatment. This study recommends interest in collecting data of antibiotic-resistant bacterial isolates and using them in choosing the right treatment.

The research has identified that the majority of bacteria isolated from patients, categorized as MDR, exhibit resistance to over three antibiotics. Notably, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus saprophyticus, and Klebsiella species all demonstrated this resistance pattern. In contrast, Proteus species displayed resistance to more than two medications, whereas Streptococcus spp. revealed resistance to at least two drugs.

Toxoplasmosis is a worldwide, well-known, parasitic infection. Despite the great advance in diagnosis, therapeutic schemes have barely evolved since 1940s. In this study, chalcone has been synthesized by Claisen-Schmidt condensation method using SOCl2/ETOH as a catalyst. The synthesized chalcone was evaluated in its potency as antiparasitic agent againstToxoplasma gondiiwhich was isolated from aborted cases. The therapeutic study involved strong positive specimen as inoculum on Vero cells topropagate the parasite.The application of microtitered chalcone is to evaluate its antiparasitic effect against the selected and propagated isolate in comparison with spiramycin.The results of the current study showed that chalcone effectively inhibited the parasite proliferation with significant declining in fold expression values (2^-∆∆CT) at different concentrations (1, 10, 50, 100, 250, 500, and 1000) μg/ml. Halfof inhibitory concentration (IC50) of chalcone is equal to 142.9 μg/ml as compared to spiramycin that showed IC50 of 281.19 μg/ml. The study concluded that chalcone had an antiparasitic effect against T. gondii and can be utilized as a medicinal agent for treating Toxoplasmosis. Furthermore, in vivo and molecular as well as synergistic monitoring studies are needed for screening of the therapeutic index of chalcone.

Abstract This work was planned as diagnostic study to evaluate the prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) among the population of 146 pregnant women of ages ranging from 14-45 years old, during the period from 20th of October 2018 to 14th of January 2019 at Al Najaf Public Health laboratory, and 50 normal pregnant women (control group), these cases were distributed according to the age groups, residency and IgM or IgG seropositivity. The diagnostic assay was firstly depending on Enzyme immunoassay (EIA) for the evaluation the prevalence of anti- T. gondii IgM and IgG antibodies in the sera of pregnant women, then confirmed by the molecular technique (Real-time PCR) using specific primers for the detection of B1 gene of T. gondii. This detection was also followed by confirmatory nested polymerase chain reaction using RE gene. Results presented in this study showed that overall seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis were 55:146 (37.67%). Out of 146 women; 53(36.3%) of samples had chronic toxoplasmosis characterized by the presence of positive IgG antibodies, while only 2 (1.37%) were positive for acute toxoplasmosis characterized by the presence of positive IgM antibodies. The prevalence of abortion according to age groups revealed that 34.9% (51:146) of the total pregnant cases; 17:53 (32.08%) of chronic T. gondii infection and the two positive acute cases (2:51) of T. gondii infection were related to women of 20-25 years age group. While 30.19% of toxoplasmosis seropositivity (16:53) were related to 32-37 years age group. According to the residency, 86:146(58.91%) were from rural area, while 60:146 (41.09%) were from urban area in Al-Najaf. Results also showed that out of 55 T. gondii seropositive cases, 39 (70.9%) were living in urban area and 16 (29.01%) were living in rural area. About 71.69% of IgG seropositive patients were lived in urban area and about 28.31% were lived in rural area. Data regarding the two IgM positive cases showed that the infection distributed evenly (50%) for both rural and urban areas in Al-Najaf. Results were also showed statistically non-significant differences in accordance to the hospitalization need Control group investigation showed that 7:50 (14%) cases were seropositive for anti- T. gondii IgG, while all control cases revealed IgM seronegativity. The statistical analysis of PCR data of T. gondii threshold cycle (CT) of B1 and RE genes were revealing mean ±Standard deviation of 18.6± 5.2 and 13.1± 1.3 respectively. The interassay coefficient of variation (CV) of B1 and RE genes of T. gondii was 28% and 10.3% respectively. We concluded that B1 and RE genes detection was successful, confirmatory to EIA and more précised for T. gondii isolated from serum samples. Key words: Toxoplasmosis, B1 gene, RE sequence, Nested PCR

Polymerase chain reaction using newly designed primers is successful for identifying Staphylococcus aureus enterotoxins (A,B and C), seb-6 gene was the most frequent .

The current study suggests that simvastatin medication may be usefully administer to reduce the levels of lipid peroxidation in infertile males to improve sperm formation and maturation.