• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.100-106
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• 2007

Objectives : The objective of the present study was to investigate alexithymia in major depressive disorder(MDD) and subclinical depression(SCD). Methods : Three hundred eighty-six community-dwelling adults(238 females and 148 males, age 19-79; mean age $43.0{\pm}13.9$) were recruited. Structured clinical Interview for DSM-IV(SCID) was conducted for the diagnosis of MDD or other Axis I psychiatric disorders. The Center for Epidemiological Studies for Depression Scale(CES-D) and the Totonto Alexithymia Scale(TAS) were administered to assess depressive symptom and alexithymia, respectively. Among subjects without MDD, those who had minor depressive disorder on the SCID or high scores(i.e. over 16) on the CES-D were defined as subjects with SCD. TAS total score and factor I, II, III scores of TAS in MDD, SCD, and non-depressive controls were compared. Results : Among 386 subjects, 38 subjects(9.8%) were diagnosed as MDD by DSM-IV criteria, while 57 subjects(14.8%) were classified into SCD group. There were significant differences between 3 groups(MDD, SCD and non-depressive controls) in total score($F_{2,383}=14.0$, p<0.01), factor I(difficulty in identifying feeling)($F_{2,383}=23.4$, p<0.01) and factor II(difficulty in describing feeling)($F_{2,383}=7.8$, p<0.01), but not factor III(external oriented thinking)($F_{2,383}=1.8$, p=0.16) of TAS. In post-hoc analysis, both MDD subjects and SCD subjects had higher scores in TAS total, factor I and factor II, compared to non-depressive controls(all p<0.01). In contrast, there were no significant differences between MDD subjects and SCD subjects in any TAS factor. Conclusion : In this study, both MDD subjects and SCD subjects were more alexithymic than non-depressive control subjects. These findings suggest that SCD, as well as MDD, is also related to alexithymia.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.84-88
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• 2012

Introduction: The objective of the present study was to investigate the independent effects of major depressive disorder (MDD) and insomnia on somatization, respectively. Methods: A total of 181 participants (73 males and 108 females ; mean age $41.59{\pm}8.92$) without serious medical problem were recruited from a community and a psychiatric clinic in Republic of Korea. Subjects were divided into 4 groups based on the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV axis I disorder (SCID-IV) and sleep questionnaire : 1) normal controls (n=127), 2) primary insomnia (n=11), 3) MDD without insomnia (n=14), and 4) MDD with insomnia (n=29). All participants were requested to complete the somatization subscores of the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R). Results: There were significant between-group differences in somatization score (F=25.30, p<0.001). Subjects with both MDD and insomnia showed higher somatization score compared to normal control (p<0.001), subjects with primary insomnia (p=0.01), or MDD subjects without insomnia (p<0.001). Subjects with primary insomnia had higher somatization score than normal controls (p<0.01), while there was no significant difference between MDD subjects without insomnia and normal controls. In multiple regression, presence of insomnia predicted higher somatization score (beta=0.44, p<0.001), while there was only non-significant association between MDD and somatization (beta=0.14, p=0.08). Conclusion: In the current study, insomnia was associated with somatization independently from major depression. Subjects with primary insomnia showed higher somatization. Within MDD patients, presence of insomnia was related to higher somatization. Our finding suggests that insomnia may partly mediate the relationship between depression and somatization.

• Journal of Korean Ophthalmic Optics Society
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.65-69
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• 2009

Purpose: Recently incidence of VDT syndrome has gradually increased as extensive use of computers. VDT syndrome reported by VDT workers include musculoskeletal disorder, neuropsychiatric disoders and eye symptoms such as eye strain, tired eyes, irritation and blurred vision. The environmental factors of VDT syndrome include electromagnetic waves, size, brightness and lighting of computer screen, height of a monitor and a worktable, working hours, kind of task, distance between screen and workers, indoor humidity and temperature, indoor air contamination and ventilation. In this study, we investigated the environmental factors related to body symptoms and health effects included in VDT syndrome. Methods: Study subjects were total 120 persons (54 male, 66 female) with age from 19 to 28. We surveyed the body symptoms and physical discomfort when doing an activity in a short distance such as reading book or paper, computer work. The questionnaire included main body symptoms, self-consciousness symptoms of eye, satisfaction of working environment, pain of the wrist when using keyboard and mouse. Results: Most of people (70%) felt physical pain from long time work of computer, paper, electrical apparatus. They mainly complained pain of neck and low back (57.1%), eye (45.2%) and head (31%). With the environmental factors, 78.3% of the subjects complaint pain of eye from inappropriate illumination. Most of the symptoms included 'eye fatigue'(38.3%), 'dryness of eye'(31.9%) and 'blurred vision'(23.7%). Subjects in this study complained discomfort of their chairs and most of them experienced pain in the wrist when using keyboard or mouse. Conclusions: When people use electrical apparatus or work with paper, people would get their eye fatigue and feeling of physical fatigue because of not harmonizing various environmental factors such as light, space, posture, worktable with theirselves. Therefore, workers should develop preventive method such as self-control of adequate break time to avoid fatigue while VDT work. Work environment should be changed to ergonomic design for optimal visual environment to prevent musculoskeletal disorder through constant research.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.459-466
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• 2011

Sleep diseases such as snoring and sleep apnea are physically, mentally harmful and results serious health problems. Snoring, known as breathing noise, is caused by coupled oscillation of the airway when the air passes through the trachea, and sleep apnea is caused by upper airway blockage. In order to solve these problems, many attempts have been made to detect the snoring during sleep and alleviate it. In this study, a new sensing system and analysis algorithm were developed in order to detect snoring sounds correctly under various sleep environments. Two polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) vibration sensors were used inside the pillow. The first PVDF sensor detects vibration transmitted through skull caused by snoring. And the second PVDF sensor detects both snoring sounds and ambient noises. The signals of two sensors were acquired through the designed analog circuits, and analyzed for snoring detection. Ten volunteers were participated for the experiment under five different conditions. Data from two PVDF sensors were processed by the established analysis algorithm, and snoring sounds were compared to noises. The results indicated that the energy of snoring is 70% bigger than that of ambient noise, which proves effectiveness of sensing system and analysis algorithm. Further study would be continued for more wide clinical studies with various environment noises. Based on this study, development of anti-snore pillow and sleep monitoring system for comfort sleep could be developed.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.477-487
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• 2016

This study attempts to comprehensively evaluate differences in sociodemographic characteristics, health behavior, disease morbidity, medical care and health-related quality of life of medical aid beneficiaries and health insurance beneficiaries. To achieve this, this study analyzes primitive data of community health survey that each health center had recently conducted in 2013. Study socioeconomic characteristics, health behavior, disease morbidity, medical care showed that various factors affecting health-related quality of life. It was found that medical aid beneficiaries showed lower health related-quality of life than health insurance beneficiaries because not good socioeconomic characteristics, health behavior, disease morbidity, and medical care and even as a comparative result after controlling socioeconomic characteristics, it was found that medical aid beneficiaries health-related quality of life was lower because of not good health behavior, disease morbidity, and medical care. Therefore, to improve health-related quality of life in medical aid beneficiaries as effectively as possible, improving mental health including managing chronic disease and stress and depression and daily living activities is above all important and our national concern with developing systematic program and policies focusing on health promotion behaviors such as moderate drinking habits and regular exercise and eating habits is required.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.11
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• pp.262-270
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• 2009

$^{18}F$-mefway has been developed as radioligand for serotonin receptor 5-$HT_{1A}$. The object of this study was to obtain the mefway precursor with the higher yield than previous method and to identify whether $^{18}F$-mefway can bind to 5-$HT_{1A}$ or not. from microPET imaging of small animal brain. Precursor was prepared by a modification of the reported procedure then [$^{18}F$] labeling was performed by adding $^{18}F$ ion at $130^{\circ}C$ in the hot cell for 30min. After purification of reaction mixture using alumina Sep-pak and HPLC, microPET images of small animal brain were determined. The chemical yield of precursor was increased from 9% to 34% using oxalyl chloride and LAH/diethylether. We synthesized a precursor which was successfully labeled with no-carrier-added $^{18}F$-by new synthetic route. This research suggest that $^{18}F$-mefway will be used a radiopharmaceutical for evaluation of central nerve system disorder as imaging a gent for 5-$HT_{1A}$ receptor.

• Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2007

The chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome (abbreviated CFIDS or CFS) is a disorder characterized by debilitating fatigue(over 6 months.), along with cognitive, musculoskeletal, and sleep abnormalities. The etiology of this illness is unlikely to be a single agent. Findings to date suggest that physiological and psychological factors work together to predispose and perpetuate the illness. Diagnosis is made difficult by the nonspecific clinical findings and no available diagnostic testing. With no known cause or cure for the chronic fatigue and immune dysfunction syndrome, treatment is based on relieving symptoms and improving the quality of life of affected patients. There is emerging evidence that chronic fatigue syndrome may be familial. In the future, studies will examine the extent to which genetic and environmental factors play a role in the development of chronic fatigue syndrome. Most patients with CFS have psychiatric problems such as a generalized anxiety disorder, or major or minor depression, therefore, these mental health disorders may be correlated with the pathophysiology of the CFS. The treatment for CFS must be individualized, due to the heterogeneity of the CFS population. Also the treatment of CFS is built on a foundation of patient-physician relationship, respect and advocacy.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.137-144
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• 2020

Delirium is among the most common mental disorders encountered in patients with a temporary cognitive impairment such as consciousness disorder, attention disorder, and poor speech, particularly among those who are older. Delirium is distressing for patients and families, can interfere with the management of symptoms such as pain, and is associated with increased elderly mortality. The purpose of this paper is to generate useful clinical knowledge that can be used to distinguish the outcomes of patients with delirium in long-term care facilities. For this purpose, we extracted the clinical classification knowledge associated with delirium using a local covering rule acquisition approach with the rough lower approximation region. The clinical applicability of the proposed method was verified using data collected from a prospective cohort study. From the results of this study, we found six useful clinical pieces of evidence that the duration of delirium could more than 12 days. Also, we confirmed eight factors such as BMI, Charlson Comorbidity Index, hospitalization path, nutrition deficiency, infection, sleep disturbance, bed scores, and diaper use are important in distinguishing the outcomes of delirium patients. The classification performance of the proposed method was verified by comparison with three benchmarking models, ANN, SVM with RBF kernel, and Random Forest, using a statistical five-fold cross-validation method. The proposed method showed an improved average performance of 0.6% and 2.7% in both accuracy and AUC criteria when compared with the SVM model with the highest classification performance of the three models respectively.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.89-96
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• 2012

Objectives: Individuals differ in their biological rhythms. This study investigated the association between the morningness-eveningness and sleep patterns, daytime sleepiness and fatigue in Korean male adolescents. Methods: Participants were 501 eleventh grade male students ($16.9{\pm}0.2$ years of age) in one male high school in Seoul. Each student completed the Korean translation of composite scale (KtCS), Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS), Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) and a questionnaire about their sleep schedule. Results: The evening group had shorter weekday sleep time than the intermediate (p<0.001) or morning group (p=0.029). The evening group had more daytime napping (16.8%, p<0.001), high rate of caffeine use (58.8%, p<0.001) and snoring (18.5%, p=0.037). The evening group showed more daytime sleepiness (8.7, SD=3.2, p<0.001) and severe fatigue (4.4, SD=1.2, p<0.001) than the intermediate or morning group. Conclusion: Adolescents with eveningness have higher problems in weekday sleep, daytime sleepiness and fatigue. An intervention program for sleep problem in these adolescents should be considered.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.635-640
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• 2018

The study conducted a Focus Group Interview (FGI) on college students to identify single-person households and Solitary Deaths of single-person households recognized by college students. This can be provided as basic data to address problems in single-person households and social problems such as future youth solitary death and will contribute to building a social safety net. This study conducted FGI to analyze data for five fourth graders majoring in social welfare. In the case of involuntary independent living, the high poverty and unemployment rate of single-person households was cited as the cause of economic instability, housing problems and emotional relationship formation. He said that he thinks about young loneliness because he has vague fears about what happens in the media and what can happen to them. As the number of young single-person households will inevitably increase in the coming months and economic difficulties are the biggest problem and the biggest cause of young solitude, institutional support is needed first, especially for housing costs.