Iraqi National Journal Of Chemistry

The article included a discussion of electrically conductive polymers and photoelectric polymers due to their importance and the properties that these polymers have in terms of their electrical and optical activity, in addition to their ease of manufacture and formation, as well as their lightweight and chemical inertness, especially after it has taken a wide range in manufacturing chips and semiconductors and high-energy and lightweight batteries. The article also dealt with the types of conductive and insulating polymers, semiconductors, band theory, and some types of conductive polymers such as polyacetylene, polyaniline, and polyphenylene. The article also included a recent article on the ability of polymers to control opacity, and finally, it talked about photovoltaic cells and their ability to generate electric current.

Background: Vitamin D is one of the fat-soluble vitamins, which, upon its chemical conversion in the liver and kidney, gives 25(OH) D, an indicator of vitamin D status in the serum. This vitamin plays multiple functions in the human body. Among these functions is that it is considered as a regulatory factor in human immunity, Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a most common disease of connective tissue and is considered as a long-lived inflammatory disease of joints. It is a common chronic systemic inflammatory autoimmune disease.
Aim of the study: The present study focused on measuring the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in RA Iraqi patients who live in Wasit Province.
Method: The total number of patients enrolled in the study were 653 of both gender and different ages. Their fasting blood samples were collected during the period of January-September 2018. Vitamin D level as 25 hydroxy vitamin D(25-OHD) was measured in the patient's serum using Roche Cobas e 411 analyzer and Roche Elecsys vitamin D total II assay (Roche Diagnostics, Mannheim, Germany).
Results: The percentage of females with RA disease was higher than the males among the patients group enrolled in the present study. A high percentage (35.5%) of the studied RA patients were found to have vitamin D severe, deficiency (vitamin D level<10 ng/mL), while (19.8%) were vitamin D deficient, (8.7%) were with vitamin D insufficiency and 9.2% of them had a sufficient level of vitamin D. Furthermore, the female’s patients appeared to have higher levels of vitamin D deficiency in comparison to the males. Moreover, vitamin D levels in the serum of RA patients aged 41-50 years were higher than those with other age ranges. While those with an age range of more than 61 years had the lowest.
Conclusion: The results indicated that vitamin D severe deficiency is high in the studied RA patients (43.5%), and its prevalence is high in women patients, as well as in patients with age of less than 41 years and those with age higher than 61 years. Meantime, the male patients have higher vitamin D than the female among all age groups.