Oscillation results for first order neutral delay differential equations with several positive and negative coefficients

We provide sufficient criteria for the oscillation of all solutions of neutral delay differential equations of the form $${[x(t)-\sum _{i=1}^{N_r}{R}_i(t)x(t-r_i(t))]}^{\mathrm{\prime }}+\sum _{i=1}^{N_p}{P}_i(t)x(t-{\tau }_i(t))-\sum _{i=1}^{N_q}{Q}_i(t)x(t-{\delta }_i(t))=0,$$ with both positive and negative terms and time-variable delays. Our results improve and generalize several existing criteria available in the literature that address restricted cases, such as constant delays or the absence of negative coefficients. Under additional assumptions on slowly varying parameters, we derive sharper oscillation conditions. We demonstrate the applicability of our findings through illustrative examples.