Publications by authors named "Fakhfakh"

Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is a common autoimmune pathology requiring lifelong insulin therapy. We report the case of a 12-year-old girl with T1DM admitted to Department C of the National Institute of Nutrition of Tunis for diabetic ketosis. She had suffered from T1DM for five years, with poor glycemic control (hemoglobin A1C = 10%) and poor therapeutic adherence.

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The protozoan parasite Leishmania has a large family of major facilitator membrane proteins part of the Folate Biopterin Transporter (FBT) family. The chromosome 10 of Leishmania has a cluster of 7 FBT genes including the S-Adenosyl methionine (AdoMet) transporter and the functionally characterized folate transporters FT1 and FT5. Six of the 7 FBT proteins coded by this locus are located at the plasma membrane as determined by gene fusions with the green fluorescent protein.

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To manage the adverse effects of garbage pollution and avoid using chemicals, a natural extract of seafood shells was obtained and explored for its beneficial role. Physical characterization highlighted that its active compounds correspond to chitin and its derivative, chitosan. The ability of the extracted biostimulant to foster tomato tolerance was tested on drought-stressed plants.

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Article Synopsis
  • Diagnosing epilepsy through EEG signals is complex and error-prone due to variability and the large amount of data involved, making portable diagnostic systems challenging to develop.
  • The paper proposes using compressive sensing to reduce EEG data while keeping important information, enabling better seizure classification using features extracted from the signals.
  • Implemented on microcontrollers like STM32 and Raspberry Pi, this system achieved significant advances, including up to 70% data reduction, faster transmission times, notable energy savings, and a high classification accuracy of 98.78% with preserved signal quality.
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A new experimental methodology is proposed which uses the electrostatic influence method (EIM) in scanning electron microscope (SEM) in order to estimate the second crossover energy E for uncharged insulators. This experimental methodology based on simultaneous time measurement of the displacement and leakage currents, is approached to the short pulse irradiation technique but under stationary e-irradiation and allows determining the intrinsic secondary electron emission yield, σ (σ is the value of the total secondary electron yield just at the beginning of the irradiation before significant charge accumulation or before the formation of a surface potential). The obtained value of E for soda-lime glass is confirmed by two additional experiments based on secondary electron imaging.

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The encephalomyopathic mtDNA depletion syndrome with methylmalonic aciduria is associated with succinyl-CoA synthetase (SCS) deficiency caused by pathogenic variants in genes encoding its two subunits. SCS is a mitochondrial enzyme involved in several metabolic pathways and acts as a heterodimer composed of α and β subunits encoded by SUCLG1 and SUCLA2 genes, respectively. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of the most pathogenic non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (nsSNPs) by applying, using different prediction tools, a filtering strategy, on the 343 and 365 nsSNPs found in SUCLG1 and SUCLA2 genes, respectively, retrieved from the databases, then to evaluate their structural and functional effects using homology modeling and molecular docking.

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Hypomyelinating leukodystrophy-5 (HLD5) is a rare autosomal recessive hypomyelination disorder characterized by congenital cataract, progressive neurologic impairment, and myelin deficiency in the central and peripheral nervous system, caused by mutations in the HYCC1 gene. Here we report a 23-year-old girl with HLD5 from unrelated families. Molecular analysis was performed using sequence screening of the HYCC1 gene.

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Objectives: The aim of this study was to validate the questionnaire "Body-Esteem Scale for Adolescents and Adults" (BESAA).

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study involving 340 adolescents who attend a Tunisian high school. We translated the BESAA into dialectal Tunisian Arabic based on the translation back-translation method.

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The Acidaminococcus genus is a part of the normal flora in gastrointestinal tract. It is a strictly anaerob Gram-negative coccus that is rarely pathogenic. We report the case of a 58-year-old man, who presented to surgery department A of the Charles Nicolle hospital, complaining of a wide inflammatory lesion in the anterior abdominal wall evolving for two weeks.

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Background: A second look trans-urethral resection of the bladder (re-TUR) is recommended after the diagnosis of T1 high grade (T1HG) bladder cancer. Few studies have evaluated the results of re-TUR after a first en bloc resection (EBR) and none of them have specifically reported the pathological results on the field of previous T1 disease.

Objective: To report the rate of upstaging and the rate of residual disease (RD) on the field of T1HG lesions resected with EBR.

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This study aimed to investigate the ability of aqueous extract of seeds (LSE) to improve the wound healing process in rat models. The gelatin, extracted from the skin of smooth-hound shark using citric acid, was used as a support material for ointment. Animals were divided into four groups of six rats each: an untreated control group, a control group treated with Moist Exposed Burn Ointment (MEBO), a treated group with gelatin gel, and a treated group with gelatin gel fortified with 20 mg/mL LSE.

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The clinical diagnosis of patients with multisystem involvement including a pronounced neurologic damage is challenging. High-throughput sequencing methods remains crucial to provide an accurate diagnosis. In this study, we reported a Tunisian patient manifesting hypotonia and global developmental delay with visual and skin abnormalities.

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Effective feature extraction and selection are crucial for the accurate classification and prediction of hand gestures based on electromyographic signals. In this paper, we systematically compare six filter and wrapper feature evaluation methods and investigate their respective impacts on the accuracy of gesture recognition. The investigation is based on several benchmark datasets and one real hand gesture dataset, including 15 hand force exercises collected from 14 healthy subjects using eight commercial sEMG sensors.

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Smart cities are characterized by the integration of various technologies and the use of data to achieve several objectives. These objectives include the creation of efficiencies, boosting economic development, expanding sustainability, and improving the overall quality of life for individuals residing and working within the urban environment. The aim of this study is to analyze the future of smart cities with respect to developing countries, specifically Jordan as the case.

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Introduction: Sleep quality is a complex phenomenon with quantitative and subjective aspects that vary during adolescence. The prevalence of sleep disorders is not known in Tunisia due to the lack of validated tools.

Aim: To translate and validate the questionnaire Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) into Tunisian Arabic in middle school students.

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Introduction: Toll-like- receptors (TLR) control important aspects of innate and adaptive immune responses. Renal cells are among the non-immune cells that express (TLR). Therefore, their activation might be implicated in renal tubulo-interstitial injury.

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The estrogen-like mycotoxin zearalenone (ZEA) was popularly occurred in several food and feeds, posing threats to human and animal health. ZEA induced renal toxicity and caused oxidative stress. In the current study, the protecting effect of kefir administration against ZEA-induced renal damage in rats was explored.

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The synthesis of a series of new -benzylidene derivatives of 3-amino-4-imino-3,5-dihydro-4-chromeno[2,3-]pyrimidine bearing two points of molecular diversity is reported. These new compounds were synthesized in five steps including two steps under microwave dielectric heating. They were fully characterized using H and C NMR, FTIR and HRMS.

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Objectives: This study aimed to construct geographically, temporally, and epidemiologically representative data sets for SARS-CoV-2 in North Africa, focusing on Variants of Concern (VOCs), Variants of Interest (VOIs), and Variants Under Monitoring (VUMs).

Methods: SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences and metadata from the EpiCoV database via the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data platform were analyzed. Data analysis included cases, deaths, demographics, patient status, sequencing technologies, and variant analysis.

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In the literature on deep neural networks, there is considerable interest in developing activation functions that can enhance neural network performance. In recent years, there has been renewed scientific interest in proposing activation functions that can be trained throughout the learning process, as they appear to improve network performance, especially by reducing overfitting. In this paper, we propose a trainable activation function whose parameters need to be estimated.

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The current study aimed to investigate the chemical composition, antioxidant, antibacterial, and cytotoxic properties of three extracts (hexane, dichloromethane, and methanol) from The composition of the methanolic extract was elucidated using HPLC-HESI-MS/MS analysis. The antioxidant effect was examined using NO, DPPH, FRAP, and TAC assays. Antimicrobial activity was evaluated by broth microdilution using various bacterial strains such as , , , and .

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In this study, Tunisian raw clay (RC) was utilized as a cheap source of silicium and aluminum for the preparation of faujasite zeolite (FAU) using the alkaline fusion technique. The zeolite's structural analysis was carried out using the XRD, nitrogen adsorption-desorption, and SEM-EDX techniques. The data collected demonstrate that the produced zeolite only included one homogeneous faujasite phase.

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Background: Congenital scoliosis (CS) is a spinal disorder caused by genetic-congenital vertebral malformations and may be associated with other congenital defects or may occur alone. It is genetically heterogeneous and numerous genes contributing to this disease have been identified. In addition, CS has a wide range of phenotypic and genotypic variability, which has been explained by the intervention of genetic factors like modifiers and environment genes.

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Intellectual disabilities (ID) and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have a variety of etiologies, including environmental and genetic factors. Our study reports a psychiatric clinical investigation and a molecular analysis using whole exome sequencing (WES) of two siblings with ID and ASD from a consanguineous family. Bioinformatic prediction and molecular docking analysis were also carried out.

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