• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.346-356
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• 2021

Purpose: Campylobacter species are currently the most common cause of bacterial gastroenteritis. In Lebanon, Campylobacter infection occurrence is underdiagnosed owing to the lack of specific culture and rapid test kits, particularly among children. This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence, laboratory findings, and clinical characteristics of Campylobacter infection in hospitalized children with acute gastroenteritis in South Lebanon. Methods: We conducted a 6-month retrospective cohort study between January and June 2018, including 291 children aged between 1 month and 12 years, who were admitted to a tertiary healthcare center in South Lebanon. The medical files of the patients were reviewed to retrieve the required clinical information, including clinical and laboratory data. Results: The prevalence of campylobacteriosis agents in pediatric patients with acute gastroenteritis is 12.02%. Patients infected with Campylobacter had more severe acute gastroenteritis than Campylobacter-negative patients and often presented with high-grade fever, diarrhea episodes more than six times per day, diarrhea lasting for more than five days, and dehydration. Indeed, children with high-grade fever (≥38.5℃) were five times more likely to test positive for Campylobacter than those with low-grade fever. In addition, the results showed a higher Vesikari score for the majority of Campylobacter-positive patients with severe acute gastroenteritis compared to a moderate profile for Campylobacter-negative patients. Conclusion: The present study findings highlight that Campylobacter infection is frequent among children with acute gastroenteritis. Therefore, the detection of Campylobacter should be carried out for the diagnosis of human gastroenteritis in Lebanon, along with the detection of routine enteropathogens.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.147-154
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• 2007

Electrocardiogram(ECG) being the recording of the heart's electrical activity provides valuable clinical information about heart's status. Many researches have been pursued for heart disease diagnosis using ECG so far. However, electrocardio-graph uses foreign diagnosis algorithm in the con due to inaccuracy of domestic diagnosis results for a heart disease. This paper proposes ST-segment extraction technique diagnosing heart disease parameter from raw ECG data. As the ST-segment is used for prediction of Coronary Artery Disease, we can predict heart disease using classification approach in data mining technique. We can also predict patient's clinical characterization from patient clinical data.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.67-75
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• 2009

In order to provide basic data for the prevention of adverse effects of lead on health, we examined lead levels in the blood of 30 handicapped workers employed in manufacturing electronic components in Seoul from 2002 to 2008. The average lead level in the blood of all the subjects was $4.79{\pm}4.32{\mu}g/dL$ in females, $2.64{\pm}2.31{\mu}g/dL$ in males, and $3.88{\pm}3.75{\mu}g/dL$ in total. Lead levels examined in this study were significantly lower than other investigators study have reported. The average lead level from personal exposure of the subjects was $1.44{\pm}0.91mg/m^3$ in the workplace. The relation between blood lead levels and personal exposure was a simple linear regression; it's equation was "Lead level in blood = 6.04 - 1.92 lead level by personal exposure".

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.85-90
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence and differences of risk factors of Metabolic syndrome according to menopausal status. From the database of the 5th Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES V) conducted in 2012, data of 3,537 women who responded to health interview and health examination questionnaires. The presence of Metabolic syndrome was assessed using the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) criteria. The prevalence of Metabolic syndrome was 17.3% in premenopause and 54.3% in postmenopause. BMI, waist circumference, blood pressure, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglyceride, and Ferritin were higher in postmenopausal women compared to premenopausal women. However, postmenopausal women had lower HDL cholesterol and TIBC when compared to premenopausal women. Hypertension was the most prominent characteristic of postmenopausal women. Low HDL cholesterol showed up as a meaningful factor in premenopausal women. According to multiple regression analysis, waist circumference, fasting glucose, and HDL cholesterol were independent predictors of menopause. Therefore, obesity control and blood lipids management is recommended for postmenopausal women.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.397-405
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• 2005

Noise may cause damage of the auditory system, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. However, we haven't the data enough to be available for understanding various effects of noise on the human body. The current study was prospectively designed to investigate the changes of the cardiac factors and cerebral hemodynamics following a transient exposure to noise in young people. 80 subjects (mean aged $23.45\pm2.40$ years) participated in this experiment and were exposed to excavator-noise with 90 decibels for 15 minutes using ear-phone. Cardiac factors such as heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP) and heart rate-systolic pressure product (RPP), and cerebral hemodynamics such as mean blood flow velocities (Vm), pulsatility indexes (PI), resistance indexes (RI) and mean blood flow velocities at breathing-hold (Vh) in the middle (MCA), anterior (ACA) and posterior cerebral arteries (PCA) were measured before (baseline) and during the noise-exposure. Although there were individual differences in above mentioned parameters, HR, systolic and diastolic BP, RPP, MCA-Vm, MCA-PI, MCA-RI, ACA-Vm, ACA-PI, ACA-RI, PCA-Vm, PCA-PI, and PCA-RI during the noise-exposure decreased compared with the baselines (P<0.05 or P<0.01), The findings of the present study suggest that a transient exposure to excavator-noise at rest causes changes in the cardiac factors and cerebral hemodynamics with individual differences. Further studies need to be carried out for clarifying the effects of longer exposure and combined mental activity with noise exposure.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.221-229
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• 2018

Trichophyton rubrum is one of the well-known pathogenic fungi and causes dermatophytosis and cutaneous mycosis in human world widely. However, there are not an available sequence type (ST) classification methods and previous studies for T. rubrum until now. Therefore, currently, molecular biological tools using their DNA sequences are used for genotype identification and classification. In the present study, in order to characterize the genetic diversity and the phylogenetic relation of T. rubrum clinical isolates, five different housekeeping genes, such as actin (ACT), calmodulin (CAL), RNA polymerase II (RPB2), superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2), and ${\beta}$-tubulin (BT2) were analyzed using by multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Also, DNA sequence analysis was performed to examine the differences between the sequences of Trichophyton strains and the identified genetic variations sequence. As a result, most of the sequences were shown to have highly matched rates in their housekeeping genes. However, genetic variations were found on three different positions of ${\beta}$-tubulin gene and were shown to have changed from $C{\rightarrow}G$ (1766), $G{\rightarrow}T$ (1876), and $C{\rightarrow}A$ (1886). To confirm the association with T. rubrum inheritance, a phylogenetic tree analysis was performed. It was classified as four clusters, but there was little significant correlation. Even so, MLST analysis is believed to be helpful for determining the genetic variations of T. rubrum in cases where there is more large-scale data accumulation. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated the first MLST analysis of T. rubrum in Korea and explored the possibility that MLST could be a useful tool for studying the epidemiology and evolution of T. rubrum through further studies.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.125-133
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• 2019

A microscope is the fundamental research and diagnostic apparatus for clinical investigation of signaling transduction, morphological changes and physiological tracking of cells and intact tissues from patients in the biomedical laboratory science. Proper use, care and maintenance of microscope with comprehensive understanding in mechanism are fully requested for reliable image data and accurate interpretation for diagnosis in the clinical laboratory. The standard operating procedure (SOP) for light microscopes includes performance procedure, brief information of all mechanical parts of microscopes with systematic troubleshooting mechanism depending on the laboratory capacity. Maintenance program encompasses cleaning objective, ocular lenses and inner optics; replacement and calibration of light source; XY sample stage management; point spread function (PSF) measurement for confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM); quality control (QC) program in fluorescent microscopy; and systematic troubleshooting. Laser safety is one of the concern for medical technologists engaged in CLSM laboratory. Laser safety guideline based on the laser classification and risk level, and advisory lab wear for CLSM users are also expatiated in this overview. Since acquired image data presents a wide range of information at the moment of acquisition, well-maintained microscopes with proper microscopic maintenance program are impulsive for its interpretation and diagnosis in the clinical laboratory.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.151-155
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• 2007

Diagnosis and prevention of cytogenetics diseases are one of the most important parts in prenatal care. For that reason, it is necessary to examine birth defects. However, there is no reliable statistical data about birth defects in our country. In this study, the ratio of birth defects were determined by cytogenetics analysis and amniocentesis, in addition, the usefulness of amniocentesis was analyzed. The screening test and the triple marker test were conducted for 3,325 pregnant women of between 15 and 22 weeks gestation. Amniocentesis was performed for 170 pregnant women who were positive in the two tests, 184 women of advanced maternal age and 48 women with family history of chromosome aberrations. Among 419 women, 8 pregnant women who were positive in the triple marker test, 1 woman who close to the cut-off value in the triple marker test, 2 women with advanced maternal age and 1 woman who has history of chromosome aberration pregnance that was positive in cytogenetics analysis. The overall incidence of chromosomal aberration was 12 cases including 7 cases of Down's syndrome, 1 case of Patau syndrome, 1 case of Klinefelter syndrome, 1 case of Edward syndrome, 1 case of Robertsonian translocation and 1 case of XYY syndrome. These results show that amniocentesis for pregnant women who need chromosome test in prenatal cytogenetics analysis is very useful.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.136-140
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• 2007

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of differences in age and sex on vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (VEMP), particularly in normal participants. Briefly, the VEMP is a response elicited by loud clicks or tone bursts recorded from the tonically contracted sternocleidomastoid muscle. A total of 72 participants were divided into 6 groups according to their age and sex (20~30/F, 20~30/M, 40~50/F, 40~50/M, ${\geq}60/F$, ${\geq}60/M$). We got the data of latency, amplitude, and asymmetry index of the amplitude(ASI) from them. As a result of this study, there are variations in VEMP amplitudes and ASI depending on the muscle tension and the intensity of stimuli. In contrast, the latency of the response is usually less varied and does not differ significantly.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.68-74
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to provide an academic basis regarding the necessity of managing depression and stress among metabolic syndrome patients by understanding 5 components of metabolic syndrome, perceived stress, and degree of depression, and by investigating their association using the national nutrition survey reference. This study was conducted by using mental health surveys and health screening test data of the 5th (2010~2012) primitive data of the national health and nutrition survey. A total of 19,599 respondents over 19 years of age were selected for the final analysis. The level of depression and stress was set as the dependent variable to identify its connection with 5 components of the metabolic syndrome. For the stress recognition, none of the metabolic syndrome components showed a significant correlation. For experiencing the depression symptom, the fasting glucose among the factors showed a significant correlation (p<0.05) among the metabolic syndrome factors. When it falls within the criteria of fasting glucose of metabolic syndrome, it has a great probability of falling under the group who experienced greater depression symptoms. As a result of the analysis by controlling cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease which is tightly related with metabolic syndrome and depression, this study observed that glucose out of 5 metabolic syndrome components is related with depression.