Publications by authors named "Zeenah Atwan"

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant shift in healthcare services, focusing on pandemic response and emergency preparedness. The Oman Ministry of Health implemented various measures to combat and control COVID-19. However, this shift disrupted routine outpatient appointments, particularly for chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus (DM) and hypertension (HTN).

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Background: Acute meningitis is a disease with case fatality and disability rate that is dependent on the causative agent.

Objective: Determine the meningitis trend in Iraq from 2007 to 2023 using a joinpoint regression at national and sub-national levels and describe the epidemiology.

Methods: Joinpoint regression model was used on surveillance data from Jan 2007 until May 2023, to calculate annual and average annual percent changes to determine the trend.

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Introduction: The World Health Organization (WHO) defined an infodemic as an overabundance of information, accurate or not, in the digital and physical space, accompanying an acute health event such as an outbreak or epidemic. It can impact people's risk perceptions, trust, and confidence in the health system, and health workers. As an immediate response, the WHO developed the infodemic management (IM) frameworks, research agenda, intervention frameworks, competencies, and processes for reference by health authorities.

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Objectives: In 2021, large outbreak of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) was reported in Iraq and cases have increased without any significant control measures. To raise awareness about the increasing cases in different regions of Iraq, hence remind the necessity to tackle contributing factors and potential outbreak interventions.

Methods: The study included 511 polymerase chain reaction-confirmed CCHF infection cases out of 1827 suspected cases from 18 Provinces from January to August 2023.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Interferons (IFN) are important antiviral proteins that help the body fight off viral infections, but viruses like SARS-CoV and MERS can weaken this response, leading to longer illnesses when treated with IFN and other antivirals.
  • - This study focused on analyzing the type I IFN response in COVID-19 patients to see if it could help lessen the infection's severity or duration.
  • - Findings indicated that while IRF3, a key protein in IFN response, was significantly upregulated in COVID-19 patients, the actual production of IFN-β was only slightly increased, suggesting that targeting IFN-β or α could be a potential treatment strategy but the overall response isn't strong enough to
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Article Synopsis
  • Rotavirus is a leading cause of gastroenteritis globally, with over a million hospital cases annually, and PML proteins play a crucial role in antiviral defense, particularly the PML-II isoform.
  • The study involved PCR and a rapid test to identify rotavirus in children under five, where blood and stool samples were analyzed for the expression of PML, PML-II, and IFN-γ.
  • The results revealed that PML and IFN-γ levels were significantly decreased (104-fold) in rotavirus-positive samples, indicating reduced gene expression linked to the infection.
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Promyelocytic leukemia (PML) proteins have been implicated in antiviral responses but PML and associated proteins are also suggested to support virus replication. One isoform, PML-II, is required for efficient transcription of interferon and interferon-responsive genes. We therefore investigated the PML-II contribution to human adenovirus 5 (Ad5) infection, using shRNA-mediated knockdown.

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Unlabelled: The late phase of adenovirus gene expression is controlled by proteins made in the intermediate phase, including L4 proteins of 22,000- and 33,000-Da apparent molecular mass (L4-22K and -33K proteins) that are expressed initially from the L4 promoter (L4P). The L4P is activated by a combination of viral proteins and cellular p53 and is ultimately inhibited again by its own products. Here, we have examined the L4P of human adenovirus type 5 in detail and have defined its transcription start site, which our data suggest is positioned by a weak TATA box.

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