Background : Mycobacterium avium complex(MAC) is the most common respiratory pathogen in nontuberculous mycobacterial pulmonary disease. This study described the clinical characteristics of the patients with pulmonary disease caused by MAC. Materials and Methods : The clinical characteristics of 24 patients with pulmonary disease caused by the MAC, who fulfilled the 1997 American Thoracic Society diagnostic criteria for nontuberculous mycobacterial pulmonary disease, were retrospectively analyzed. Results : Fourteen patients(58%) were male and the median age at diagnosis was 61 years(range 46-75). Of the 24 patients, 16(67%) had a M. intracellulare infection, 7(29%) had a M. avium infection and one patient was not identified. Coughing (92%) and sputum (88%) were most frequently observed symptoms. The sputum smear for acid-fast bacilli was positive in 17(71%) patients. Fourteen(58%) patients had the upper lobe cavitary form and 10(42%) patients had the nodular bronchiectatic form. In a comparison between the patients with the upper lobe cavitary form and those with the nodular bronchiectatic form, significant differences were found according to sex(male 86% vs. 20%, p=0.003), smoking history(79% vs. 10%, p=0.008), the presence of an underlying disease(64% vs. 20%, p=0.036), the pulmonary function(% forced vital capacity, median 71% vs. 88%, p=0.022; % forced expiratory volume in one second, median 69% vs. 89%, p=0.051) and bilateral disease at chest radiography(29% vs. 90%, p=0.005). The time from the onset of symptoms to diagnosis was longer in those with the nodular bronchiectatic form(median 72 months, range 8-132) than those with the upper lobe cavitary form(median 22 months, range 6-60) Conclusions : MAC pulmonary disease occurs in two distinct populations with two distinct clinical presentations. For a correct diagnosis of MAC pulmonary disease, knowledge of the diverse clinical and radiological findings is essential.
Background : Early diagnosis and proper antibiotic treatment are very important in the management of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) because of its high mortality. Bronchoscopy with a protected specimen brush (PSB) has been considered the standard method to isolate the causative organisms of VAP. However, this method burdens consumer economically to purchase a PSB. Another useful method for the diagnosis of VAP is quantitative cultures of aspirated specimens through bronchoscopic bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL), for which the infusion of more than 120 m1 of saline has been recommended for adequate sampling of a pulmonary segment. However, occasionally it leads to deterioration of the patient's condition. We studied the diagnostic efficacy of minibronchoalveolar lavage (miniBAL), which retrieves only 25 ml of BAL fluid, in the isolation of causative organisms of VAP. Methods: We included 38 consecutive patients (41 cases) suspected of having VAP on the basis of clinical evidence, who had received antibiotics before the bronchoscopy. The two diagnostic techniques of PSB and miniBAL, which were performed one after another at the same pulmonary segment, 'were compared prospectively. The cut-off values for quantitative cultures to define causative bacteria of VAP were more than
Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy of interferon alpha therapy with or without prednisolone in children with chronic hepatitis B. Methods: Twenty-eight children (22 boys, 6 girls, mean age 130 months) had seropositive results for HBsAg, HBeAg and HBV DNA; 11 had chronic persistent hepatitis and 17 had chronic active hepatitis. The patients were divided into two groups depending upon their inflammatory activity on liver biopsy, pretreatment serum ALT levels and HBV DNA levels. Fourteen children (group 1: chronic active hepatitis, ALT
"Cheongcheongjinmi" is a new japonica rice variety developed from a cross between Iri401 and Ilpumbyeo by the rice breeding team of National Institute of Crop Science, RDA. This variety is suitable for ordinary season culture of low level nitrogen application. Heading date of "Cheongcheongjinmi" is August 17, 4 days later than that of Sobibyeo in plain areas. It has culm length of 82 cm, and relatively semi-erect pubescent leaf blade and slightly tough culm tolerant to lodging with good canopy architecture. This variety has 13 tillers per hill, 126 spikelets per panicle and 90.2% of ripened grains. "Cheongcheongjinmi" showed lower spikelet fertility than Sobibyeo when exposed to cold stress. This variety showed slower leaf senescence and lower viviparous germination compared to Sobibyeo during the ripening stage. "Cheongcheongjinmi" is susceptible to blast disease, bacterial blight, virus diseases and planthoppers. The dried plant weight, total nitrogen and RuBisCO activity of "Cheongcheongjinmi" were higher than those of Sobibyeo in low level nitrogen application. The milled rice of "Cheongcheongjinmi" exhibits translucent, clear non-glutinous endosperm and medium short grain. It shows lower protein and amylose contents than those of Sobibyeo, and better palatability of cooked rice compared to Hwaseongbyeo. The milled rice yield of this cultivar is about 5.10 MT/ha at low level nitrogen application of ordinary season culture in local adaptability test for three years. Especially, "Cheongcheongjinmi" has better milling properties such as the percentage of whole grain in milled rice and milling recovery of whole grain, respectively than those of Sobibyeo. "Cheongcheongjinmi" would be adaptable to middle plain areas and middle-western coastal areas of Korea.
"Jongnambyeo", a new japonica rice cultivar(Oryza sativa L.), is a mid-late maturing ecotype developed by the rice breeding team of National Yeongnam Agricultural Experiment Station(NYAES) in 2001 and released in 2002. This variety originated from the cross of Milyang96/YR12734-B-B-22-2(in 1991/1992 winter) and was selected by means of a mixed method of bulk and pedigree breeding. The pedigree of Junambyeo, Milyang 169 designated in 1999, was YR15161-B-B-B-57-2-3. It has about 79cm in culm length and tolerant to lodging. And this variety is resistant to bacterial leaf blight(
From January 2020 to October 2021, more than 500,000 academic studies related to COVID-19 (Coronavirus-2, a fatal respiratory syndrome) have been published. The rapid increase in the number of papers related to COVID-19 is putting time and technical constraints on healthcare professionals and policy makers to quickly find important research. Therefore, in this study, we propose a method of extracting useful information from text data of extensive literature using LDA and Word2vec algorithm. Papers related to keywords to be searched were extracted from papers related to COVID-19, and detailed topics were identified. The data used the CORD-19 data set on Kaggle, a free academic resource prepared by major research groups and the White House to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, updated weekly. The research methods are divided into two main categories. First, 41,062 articles were collected through data filtering and pre-processing of the abstracts of 47,110 academic papers including full text. For this purpose, the number of publications related to COVID-19 by year was analyzed through exploratory data analysis using a Python program, and the top 10 journals under active research were identified. LDA and Word2vec algorithm were used to derive research topics related to COVID-19, and after analyzing related words, similarity was measured. Second, papers containing 'vaccine' and 'treatment' were extracted from among the topics derived from all papers, and a total of 4,555 papers related to 'vaccine' and 5,971 papers related to 'treatment' were extracted. did For each collected paper, detailed topics were analyzed using LDA and Word2vec algorithms, and a clustering method through PCA dimension reduction was applied to visualize groups of papers with similar themes using the t-SNE algorithm. A noteworthy point from the results of this study is that the topics that were not derived from the topics derived for all papers being researched in relation to COVID-19 (