No abstract available.
Blood Transfusion* ; Outcome Assessment (Health Care)*

Objective: To investigate the inhibitory activity of ten culinary herbs and spices namely on glucose-mediated glycation (GMG) and fructose-mediated glycation (FMG) of bovine serum albumin. Methods: Fluorescence was used as an index of albumin glycation using glucose and fructose as substrates in the presence of infusions and ethanolic extracts of ten culinary herbs and spices. Antioxidant activity of the extracts was evaluated using reducing power, metal ion chelating and superoxide radical scavenging assays. Phytochemicals profile was analysed using 13 standard methods. Results: FMG was found to be significantly higher than GMG (95 and 84 AU, respectively; P < 0.05). Infusions and ethanolic extracts showed significant (P < 0.05) inhibitory activity on both GMG and FMG when compared to appropriate controls. No significant difference (P > 0.05) was found in the percentage glycation inhibitory activity of infusions compared to ethanolic extracts. The mean percentage inhibitory activity of the extracts for GMG (45.9%) and for FMG (45.1%) was not significantly different (P > 0.05). Qualitative phytochemical analysis showed the presence of alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, terpenoids, anthraquinones, steroids, reducing sugars, proteins, phenols, saponins, phlobatannins, and cardiac glycosides. Conclusions: The higher rate of fluorescence generation by fructation suggests that glycation by fructose deserves much attention as a glycating agent. Data herein showed that the extracts inhibited GMG and FMG. Thus, these edible plants could be a natural source of antioxidants and anti-glycation agent for preventing advanced glycation end-products-mediated complications.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a recent respiratory infection caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) with serious complications, severe acute respiratory syndrome (ARDS), cytokine storm, and coagulopathies. Complete blood count (CBC) is a routine inexpensive and easy test that provides information regarding formed blood content such as white blood cells (WBC), platelet, neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and lymphocyte-monocyte ratio (LMR) to detect degree of inflammation. This study attempts to assess, at an early phase of the disease, the prognosis of COVID-19 patients and predict high risk patients who will most probably develop ARDS and cytokine storm by analyzing blood cells count. This study is a single-center case series on COVID‐19 patients who were prospectively analyzed at Al-Furat General Hospital in Baghdad from March to August 2020. Up to 123 Covid-19 patients in two groups, 100 who survived versus 23 who did not survive were included. Patients with abnormal renal and hepatic tests were excluded. Results revealed that the median age of patients was 40 years, ranging from 2-84 years of age. Males (61.8%) were more affected by COVID-19 than females (38.2%). Survived patients exhibited far lowered WBC count (6.06±3.17) than non-survived patients (11.4±6.08; p<0.0001). Lymphocyte count in survived patients (1.6±1.1) were higher than non-survived patients (1.1±0.4; p<0.004). Neutrophils showed lower count (3.7±2.7) in survived patients than non-survived patients (8.9±4.5). Also, receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis for NLR, LMR and PLR revealed a cut off value for abnormally high or low NLR >5, LMR ≤1.8, and PLR >176 with area under curve (AUC) 0.9, 0.8, and 0.6, respectively. These cut off values represent landmarks above or below which poor prognosis and non-survival is highly predicted. NLR was found to be the most prognostic index to detect bad prognosis and non-survival of the disease at 90% sensitivity, followed by LMR and then PLR. The percentage of non-survived patients who had abnormally high NLR (82.6%), LMR (65.2%) and PLR (56.5%) were far higher than survived patients (NLR: 9%; LMR: 8%; PLR: 22%).
COVID-19