• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.28-36
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• 1994

Studies on the food-safety of pheasant and mallard, which belong to wild fowl as new meat resources. were carried out. The results were summarized as follows : 1. Food poisoning bacteria including Salmonella spp, was not detected from the inspections of small intestine, cecum, and rectum. 2. Parasite inspection tests on blood, feces, digestive organ, and thoracic organs were negative. 3. Antibiotic residues from the carcass muscle by simplified disk methods were not detected. 4. Seven different pesticide residue tests, such as DDT and BHT, on the muscle and liver were negative. 5. Four different kinds of toxic heavy metals such as Cd were much lower than the permissible concentration. Studies on the food safety tests and inspections from the pheasant and mallard were revealed that from taking this new food resources, the toxicities would be very low for the human health by the direct influences.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.679-691
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• 1993

As a series of studies to investigate the effect of immunosuppression on Ascaris suum infection in undefinitive hosts, a delicate relationship between host and parasite, rabbits were divided into experiment 1(control group) and experiment 2(immnunosuppressive group treated with prednisolone acetate) and inoculated with a single dose of 5,000 embryonated A suum eggs. The recovery rates, sizes and morphology of the larvae and immunological responses in the rabbits were chronologically monitored according to somatic migration. In both experiments, the larvae failed to develop into the adults, but young adults in the experiment 2 grew somewhat faster and survied later than those in the experiment 1. The mast cells of small intestinal mucosa and mesenteric lymph nodes and the goblet cells of small intestinal mucosa in the worm detected cases of experiment 2 decreased remarkably in number comparing with those of experiment 1. Considering the experimental results. the expulsion mechanism of somatic migrant larvae may he related to the temporary increasing tendency of the mast cells, the goblet cells, T-cells of mesenteric lymph nodes and spleens, eosinophils in peripheral blood, degranulation rates of peritoneal mast cells and the migration inhibition rates of leucocytes. In addition, patent infection of A suum in the rabbits was not obviously observed despite of immunosuppression by prednisolone acetate.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.647-652
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• 2020

Clonorchis sinensis is the most common fish-borne intestinal parasite in Korea. The aim of the present investigation was to survey the status of C. sinensis infection and analyze associated risk factors in residents of Haman-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do. A total of 5,114 residents from 10 administrative towns/villages voluntarily agreed to participate in the study, which comprised fecal examination, a questionnaire survey for risk factors, ultrasonography, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for cancer biomarker detection in the blood. We detected C. sinensis eggs in 5.3% of the subjects. By region, Gunbuk-myeon had the highest number of residents with C. sinensis eggs. The infection rate and intensity were higher in male than in female residents. Based on the risk factor questionnaire, infection was highly associated with drinking, a history of C. sinensis infection, and the practice of eating of raw freshwater fish. Extension of the bile duct, infection intensity, and cancer biomarker detection significantly correlated with the presence of eggs in the study population. In conclusion, the development of feasible, long-term control policies and strategies for the elimination of C. sinensis in Korea is still required.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.483-490
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• 2022

Malaria is a disease caused by a parasite and it is prevalent in all over the world. The usual method used to recognize malaria cells is a thick and thin blood smears examination methods, but this method requires a lot of manual calculation, so the efficiency and accuracy are very low as well as the lack of pathologists in impoverished country has led to high malaria mortality rates. In this paper, a malaria cell image recognition model using transfer learning is proposed, which consists in the feature extractor, the residual structure and the fully connected layers. When the pre-training parameters of the VGG-19 model are imported to the proposed model, the parameters of some convolutional layers model are frozen and the fine-tuning method is used to fit the data for the model. Also we implement another malaria cell recognition model without residual structure to compare with the proposed model. The simulation results shows that the model using the residual structure gets better performance than the other model without residual structure and the proposed model has the best accuracy of 97.33% compared to other recent papers.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.60 no.6
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• pp.401-407
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• 2022

Antimalarial drugs play an important role in the control and treatment of malaria, a deadly disease caused by the protozoan parasite Plasmodium spp. The development of novel antimalarial agents effective against drug-resistant malarial parasites is urgently needed. The novel derivatives, SKM13-MeO and SKM13-F, were designed based on an SKM13 template by replacing the phenyl group with electron-donating (-OMe) or electron-withdrawing groups (-F), respectively, to reverse the electron density. A colorimetric assay was used to quantify cytotoxicity, and in vitro inhibition assays were performed on 3 different blood stages (ring, trophozoite, and schizonts) of P. falciparum 3D7 and the ring/mixed stage of D6 strain after synchronization. The in vitro cytotoxicity analysis showed that 2 new SKM13 derivatives reduced the cytotoxicity of the SKM13 template. SKM13 maintained the IC₅₀ at the ring and trophozoite stages but not at the schizont stage. The IC₅₀ values for both the trophozoite stage of P. falciparum 3D7 and ring/mixed stages of D6 demonstrated that 2 SKM13 derivatives had decreased antimalarial efficacy, particularly for the SKM13-F derivative. SKM13 may be comparably effective in ring and trophozoite, and electron-donating groups (-OMe) may be better maintain the antimalarial activity than electron-withdrawing groups (-F) in SKM13 modification.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.61 no.4
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• pp.455-462
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• 2023

Since 2015, countries in the Sahel region have implemented large-scale seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC). However, the mass use of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) plus amodiaquine impacts the genetic diversity of malaria parasites and their sensitivity to antimalarials. This study aimed to describe and compare the genetic diversity and SP resistance of Plasmodium falciparum strains in Mali and Niger. We collected 400 blood samples in Mali and Niger from children aged 3-59 months suspected of malaria. Of them, 201 tested positive (Niger, 111, 55.2%; Mali, 90, 44.8%). Polymorphism of merozoite surface protein 1 (msp1) genetic marker showed 201 allotypes. The frequency of the RO33 allotype was significantly higher in Niger (63.6%) than in Mali (39.3%). There was no significant difference in the frequency of the K1 and MAD20 allotypes between the 2 countries. The multiplicity of infection was 2 allotypes per patient in Mali and one allotype per patient in Niger. The prevalence of strains with the triple mutants Pfdhfr51I/Pfdhfr59R/Pfdhps436A/F/H and Pfdhfr51I/Pfdhfr59R/Pfdhps437G was 18.1% and 30.2%, respectively, and 7.7% carried the quadruple mutant Pfdhfr51I/Pfdhfr59R/Pfdhps436A/F/H/Pfdhps437G. Despite the significant genetic diversity of parasite populations, the level of SP resistance was comparable between Mali and Niger. The frequency of mutations conferring resistance to SP still allows its effective use in intermittent preventive treatment in pregnant women and in SMC.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.550-554
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• 2004

A paragonimiasis infestation is caused by the paragonimus species. It is commonly found in the lung but has also been found to exist extrapulmonary infestations including cerebral, spinal, subcutaneous, hepatic, splenic, abdominal, urinary, and gynecologic infestation. On the other hand, a cutaneous infestation is extremely rare. Human infestation is caused by ingesting raw or undercooked intermediate hosts. Because paragonimus westermani larva mature to an adult worm in the lung, the possibility of identifying the adult worm of paragonimus westermani at extrapulmonary region is very rare. Case : After ingesting a fresh-water crab 1 month prior to the hospital visit, a 45-year old female patient was suffering from right pleuritic chest pain during that 1 month. The patient also complained of a palpable mass that was movable and migrating, and it was localized at the right upper quadrant of the abdomen. The eosinophil fraction of the white blood cell of peripheral blood and pleural fluid was elevated to 55.1% and 90%, respectively. Parasite eggs were not found in her sputum and stool examination. By using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), the paragonimus-specific IgG antibody titer was elevated to 0.28. During incisional biopsy, we were able to find the young adult worm of paragonimus westermani. We experienced the rare case of ectopic paragonimiasis with pleural effusion that was confirmed by identifying the adult worm of paragonimus westermani within the abdominal subcutaneous tissue. We report a case with brief literature reviews.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.253-259
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• 2016

In the era of (pre) elimination setting, the prevalence of malaria has been decreasing in most of the previously endemic areas. Therefore, effective cost- and time-saving validated pooling strategy is needed for detection of malaria in low transmission settings. In this study, optimal pooling numbers and lowest detection limit were assessed using known density samples prepared systematically, followed by genomic DNA extraction and nested PCR. Pooling strategy that composed of 10 samples in 1 pool, $20{\mu}l$ in 1 sample, was optimal, and the parasite density as low as $2p/{\mu}l$ for both falciparum and vivax infection was enough for detection of malaria. This pooling method showed effectiveness for handling of a huge number of samples in low transmission settings (<9% positive rate). The results indicated that pooling of the blood samples before DNA extraction followed by usual nested PCR is useful and effective for detection of malaria in screening of hidden cases in low-transmission settings.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.147-152
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• 2020

Malaria is a potent burden on public healthcare worldwide due to requiring rapid diagnosis and treatment. Nowadays, prompt diagnosis with rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) has been widely accepted as an effective diagnostic technique in malaria-endemic countries, primarily due to their easy operation, fast output, and straightforward interpretation. The global availability and use of RDTs have gradually grown over recent decades as field-applicable diagnostic tests for the reliable confirmation of malaria infection and proper case management. This study was conducted to evaluate diagnostic performance of 3 commercially available malaria RDT kits : BIOCREDIT^TM Malaria Ag Pf(pLDH), Malaria Ag Pf(pLDH/pHRPII), and Malaria Ag Pf/Pv(pLDH/pLDH) (where pLDH and pHRPII stand for plasmodium lactate dehydrogenase and histidine-rich protein 2, respectively) for the specific detection of Plasmodium falciparum. A total of 1,129 blood samples including 95 blood samples, confirmed as vivax malaria infection by microscopic examinations and a nested-PCR method, were tested for falciparum malaria infection. The overall sensitivity and specificity of Malaria Ag Pf(pLDH/pHRPII), Malaria Ag Pf/Pv(pLDH/pLDH), and Pf(pLDH) for P. falciparum were 99.0% and 100%, 95.8% and 100%, and 100% and 100%, respectively. It is proposed that the 3 RDT kits perform reliable level of diagnostic accuracy of detection for P. falciparum parasites.

• Laboratory Medicine Online
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.100-104
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• 2011

Background: Malaria is a problematic disease in Korea, and microscopic examination of Giemsa-stained blood smear has been used as the gold standard for its diagnosis. However, this technique is time-consuming and has low sensitivity in samples with low numbers of malarial parasites (<20 parasites/μL). Here, we evaluated the performance characteristics of the LG Advansure^TM Malaria P.f./P.v. real-time QPCR (LG life sciences, Korea). Methods: Blood samples from 173 persons who visited Korea University Ansan Hospital were evaluated. QPCR was performed in 73 malaria patients and 100 healthy subjects by using the LG Advansure Malaria P.f./P.v. real-time QPCR^R kit, and the results were compared with those of microscopy. The detection limit of this kit was determined by serial dilution of Plasmodium-infected blood with normal blood (blood not infected with Plasmodium). Results: Among the 73 patients that were microscopically confirmed to have malaria (Plasmodium vivax infection, N=70, P. falciparum infection, N=3), 69 patients were diagnosed with P. vivax infection and 3 were diagnosed with P. falciparum infection by LG Advansure^TM Malaria P.f./P.v. realtime QPCR. Both the tests indicated absence of infection in the 100 healthy subjects. The detection limit of LG Advansure^TM Malaria P.f./P.v. real-time QPCR was 0.1 parasite/μL. Conclusions: LG Advansure^TM Malaria P.f./P.v. real-time QPCRis a very sensitive and specific technique and can be used as a confirmatory test for malaria.