• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.389-397
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• 2019

The infection status of Clinostomum complanatum metacercariae (CcMc) was broadly surveyed in fishes from water systems of Nakdong-gang (River) in the Republic of Korea (Korea) for 5 years. All 4,468 fishes collected were individually examined by the artificial digestion methods. No CcMc were detected in fishes from Naeseongcheon in Yecheongun, Gigyecheon in Gyeongju-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do, and Hamancheon in Haman-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do. In fishes from Wicheon in Gunwi-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do, CcMc were detected in 180 (15.4%) out of 1,168 fishes and their intensity was 5.8 per fish infected. The prevalences with CcMc in positive fish species from 3 other surveyed areas, i.e., Banbyeoncheon in Yeongyang-gun, Nakdong-gang in Sangju-si and Hoecheon in Goryeong-gun, in Gyeongsangbuk-do were 19.3%, 33.3%, and 19.0% and their intensities were 1.5, 17.6, and 2.6 per fish infected respectively. In fishes from Yangcheon in Sancheong-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do, CcMc were detected in 811 (45.6%) out of 1,779 fishes examined and their intensity was 9.8 per fish infected. The prevalence was most high in Squalidus spp. (97.7%) and followed by acheilognathinid fish (66.8%), Pungtungia herzi (52.0%), rasborinid fish (39.6%) and Hemibarbus spp. (25.9%) from Yangcheon. The intensity was also most high in Squalidus spp. (27.0). The endemicity with CcMc was very low in fishes from water systems of Nakdong-gang in the east coast of Korea. Conclusively, it is confirmed that various fish species act as the second intermediate hosts of C. complanatum, and the endemicities of CcMc are more or less different by the fish species and group from Yangcheon, in Sancheong-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do, Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.84 no.3
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• pp.763-769
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• 2023

Primary malignant melanoma in breast parenchyma (PMB) is an extremely rare disease, and the most common presentation is a palpable breast lump. To the best of our knowledge, a case of PMB presenting as a breast abscess has not been reported in English literatures. We present a case of PMB that manifested as a recurrent breast abscess in a 71-year-old woman. On MRI, an enhancing solid mass with a cystic or necrotic portion was revealed with some high signal intensities on precontrast-enhanced T1-weighted images and a dark rim on T2-weighed images. The MRI features played a pivotal role in identifying the underlying malignant condition and making an accurate diagnosis of this rare case of PMB with unusual clinical presentation.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.291-299
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• 2016

Human hydatid disease (cystic echinococcosis, CE) is a chronic parasitic infection caused by the larval stage of the cestode Echinococcus granulosus. As the disease mainly affects the liver, approximately 70% of all identified CE cases are detected in this organ. Optical molecular imaging (OMI), a noninvasive imaging technique, has never been used in vivo with the specific molecular markers of CE. Thus, we aimed to construct an in vivo fluorescent imaging mouse model of CE to locate and quantify the presence of the parasites within the liver noninvasively. Drug-treated protoscolices were monitored after marking by JC-1 dye in in vitro and in vivo studies. This work describes for the first time the successful construction of an in vivo model of E. granulosus in a small living experimental animal to achieve dynamic monitoring and observation of multiple time points of the infection course. Using this model, we quantified and analyzed labeled protoscolices based on the intensities of their red and green fluorescence. Interestingly, the ratio of red to green fluorescence intensity not only revealed the location of protoscolices but also determined the viability of the parasites in vivo and in vivo tests. The noninvasive imaging model proposed in this work will be further studied for long-term detection and observation and may potentially be widely utilized in susceptibility testing and therapeutic effect evaluation.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Inherited Metabolic disease
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.25-30
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• 2023

Leigh syndrome is a rare progressive neurodegenerative mitochondrial disorder with clinical and genetic heterogeneity. Recently, balletic IARS2 variants have been identified in a number of patients presenting broad clinical phenotypes from Leigh and West syndrome to a rare syndrome CAGSSS characterized by cataracts, growth hormone deficiency, sensory neuropathy, sensorineural hearing loss, and skeletal dysplasia syndrome (OMIM#616007). We describe a child with Korean Leigh syndrome with urologic manifestations resulting from a compound heterozygote mutation in IARS2. A 5-year-old girl visited the emergency room with a complaint of abdominal pain accompanied by abdominal distension. Abdominal-pelvic CT showed a markedly distended urinary bladder without definite obstructive lesions. She was diagnosed with neurogenic bladder dysfunction based on a urodynamic study. She had global delayed development due to neurologic regression after 6 months of age and a history of bilateral cataract surgery at the age of 2 years. Her brain magnetic resonance imaging showed symmetrically increased signal intensities in the bilateral putamen and caudate nuclei with diffuse cerebral atrophy. No gene variants were identified through whole-mitochondrial genome analysis. Whole exome sequencing was performed for diagnosis, and compound heterozygous pathogenic variants were identified in IARS2: c.2446C>T (p. Arg816Ter) and c.2450G>A (p. Arg817His). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case report of bladder dysfunction manifestation in a patient with IARS2-related Leigh syndrome. Thus, it broadens the clinical and genetic spectrum of IARS2-associated diseases.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.90-97
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• 2018

This study assessed the effect of ozone to control pathogenic bacteria in inlet water flowing to flounder farms, establishing operational parameters of ozonation at seawater conditions. Hydraulic retention time in a reaction pipeline after ozonation was fixed at 3 minutes in a flow through system. Concentrations of total residual oxidant (TRO) by ozonation were measured according to different ozonation intensities. The oxidant reduction potential (ORP), which is indirect but enables real-time measurement, was measured in relation to TRO values. TRO values were $0.01{\pm}0.01mg\;L^{-1}$ at an ORP range of 320-410 mV, $0.07{\pm}0.02mg\;L^{-1}$ at 600 mV, and $0.16{\pm}0.03mg\;L^{-1}$ at 700 mV. A heterotrophic marine bacteria colony was reduced by 80.6-97.9%, showing the suppression effect of ozonation on total bacteria in inlet water. At an ORP range of 400-500 mV, colonies of heterotrophic marine bacteria, Vibrio spp., and gram negative bacteria were significantly reduced in outlet water from a culture tank with ongrowing flounder (230 g) at a stocking density of $8kg\;m^{-2}$. Especially, Vibrio spp. and gram negative bacteria were seldom found at 400-500 mV. The daily feeding rate was from over 0.7% to total body weight at 300-500 mV, showing better performance than that in the control. The pathogenic bacteria entering the flounder farm were effectively removed when the ORP range to 400 mV or less.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.539-553
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• 2017

We propose a multi-state model to analyze semi-competing risks data with interval-censored or missing intermediate events. This model is an extension of the three states of the illness-death model: healthy, disease, and dead. The 'diseased' state can be considered as the intermediate event. Two more states are added into the illness-death model to incorporate the missing events, which are caused by a loss of follow-up before the end of a study. One of them is a state of the lost-to-follow-up (LTF), and the other is an unobservable state that represents an intermediate event experienced after the occurrence of LTF. Given covariates, we employ the Lin and Ying additive hazards model with log-normal frailty and construct a conditional likelihood to estimate transition intensities between states in the multi-state model. A marginalization of the full likelihood is completed using adaptive importance sampling, and the optimal solution of the regression parameters is achieved through an iterative quasi-Newton algorithm. Simulation studies are performed to investigate the finite-sample performance of the proposed estimation method in terms of empirical coverage probability of true regression parameters. Our proposed method is also illustrated with a dataset adapted from Helmer et al. (2001).

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.224-230
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• 2006

Up to now, there have been rare clinical studies on leaders and aerobics athletes. To get the useful data for protecting from auditory disorder, we selected 15 female aerobics leaders (experimental group) and 15 females (control group) unexperienced in aerobics and a without neurological and octolaryngological disorder. The average age was $34.87{\pm}8.80$ (experimental group) and $34.07{\pm}8.45$ (control group) years, and the average career of an aerobics leader (experimental group) was $8.33{\pm}4.73$ years. We measured the auditory evoked potential (AEP) of the two groups treated with 70, 75 and 85 dB intensity from January 2006 to May 2006 and analyzed the absolute latency (AL) and interpeak latency (IPL) by the SPSS/pc+ 12.0 program. In the comparison of the AL between the experimental group and the control group according to intensity, both ears treated with 70 and 75 dB had a significant difference (p<0.05) in the I, III, V wave and in the I, V wave respectively, and the experimental group treated with 85 dB showed a difference in the I, III, V wave (left ear) and in the I wave (right ear) respectively. The IPL of the two groups treated with various intensities had no prolongation. In the comparison of the AL between the experimental group and the control group according to ages, the experimental group in their 20s treated with 70 dB showed a significant difference (p<0.05) in the V wave (left ear) and in the I, III, V wave (right ear), and the experimental group in their 20s treated with 75 dB in the I, III wave (left ear) and in I, III, V wave (right ear), and experimental group in their 20s treated with 85 dB in the V wave (left ear) and in the III, V wave (right ear). The experimental group in their 30s treated with 70 dB had a significant difference (p<0.05) only in the V wave (right ear). Only in the IPL of subjects in their 20s treated with 85 dB, III-V and I-V of both ears was extended. In the comparison of the AL and IPL according to career, there was no significant difference between the two groups. From this results, we concluded that the lower sound intensity (70 dB) showed a more significant difference in the experimental group than the control group. We concluded that the leader of aerobics exposed to louder sounds than normal people are affected by auditory neurological and octolaryngological disorders. So we think that the leaders of aerobics need to control the noise level for protecting themselves against a disease.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.45 no.2 s.142
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• pp.157-161
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• 2007

A total of 1,496 rodents and insectivores were live-trapped at Yeoncheon-gun (n = 351), Paju-shi (804), and Pocheon-gun (343), Gyeonggi-do (Province), and examined for intestinal helminths, including Neodiplostomum seoulense, seasonally from December 2004 to September 2005. Six species of rodents, including Apodemus agrarius (1,366), Mus musculus (32), Micronytus fortis (28), Eothenomys regulus (9), Micronys minutus (6), and Cricetulus triton (3), and 1 species of insectivores Crocidura lasiura (54) were collected. A total of 321 adult N. seoulense were collected from 19 (1.4%) A. agrarius. The worm burden ranged from 1 to 101 per A. agrarius (mean; 16.9). No N. seoulense was observed in other rodent or insectivore species examined. The infection rate during autumn (4.5%) was higher than those during spring (0.8%), summer (0.8%), and winter (0.5%). The average number of N. seoulense in infected A. agrarius was the highest in spring (66.0 specimens), followed by autumn (15.2), winter (4.5), and summer (3.3). This study first confirms that A. agrarius is a natural definitive host for N. seoulense, and demonstrates that the infection rates and intensities vary seasonally and geographically.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.283-288
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• 2018

As the use of environmentally friendly and non-disease natural pigments grows, various methods for extracting natural pigments have been studied. The natural color was extracted from parsley, a vegetable ingredient containing natural dyes. Target color codes of green series of natural dyes extracted as variables #50932C (L = 55.0, a = -40.0, b = 46.0) were set with the pH and temperature of extracted natural color coordinates (of the extracted), and the quantitative intensities of natural dyes were analyzed. During the colorimetric analysis predicted by the reaction surface analysis method, a color coordinate analysis was conducted under the optimal conditions of pH 8.0 and extraction temperature of $60.9^{\circ}C$. Under these conditions, predicted figures of L, a, and b were 55.0, -36.3, and 36.8, respectively, while actual experimental ones confirmed were 69.0, -35.9, and 31.4, respectively. In these results, the theory accuracy and actual error rate were confirmed to be 73.0 and 13.8%, respectively. The theoretical optimization condition of the color difference (${\Delta}E$) was at the pH of 9.2 and extraction temperature of $55.2^{\circ}C$. Under these conditions the predicted ${\Delta}E$ figure was 12.4 while the experimental one was 13.0. The difference in color analysis showed 97.5% of the theoretical accuracy and 4.5% of the actual error rate. However, the combination of color coordinates did not represent a desired target color, but rather close to the targeted color by means of an arithmetic mean. Therefore, it can be said that when the reaction surface analysis method was applied to the natural dye extraction process, the use of color coordinates as a response value can be a better method for optimizing the dye extraction process.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.84-91
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• 1995

Many clinical and laboratory tests have been employed to evaluate disease activity in rheumatioid arthritis. $^{99m}Tc$-labelled polyclonal IgG(HIG) has been demonstrated to accumulate in focal sites of infection or inflammation in both animals and human subjects. The purpose of this study was to distinguish arthritis with active inflammation from those without active inflammation and to correlate relative intensities of $^{99m}Tc$-labelled HIG uptake of the rheumatoid arthritis with clinical and MR indices of the joint inflammation. This study included twelve patients with active rheumatoid arthritis, two with ankylosing spondylitis and one with degenerative osteoarthritis without active inflammation. A Whole-body and spot images were obtained 4 hours after intravenous injection of 20mCi of $^{99m}Tc$-labelled HIG. Scintigrams were assessed visually by 3 experienced radiologists, and graded as normal or mildly and markedly increased uptake within the joints, and the degree of uptake was compared with clinical and radiologic severity of synovial inflammation. MRI studies were done on the involved joints consisted of wrist(n = 11), knee(n = 2) and hip joint(n= 2). Active synovitis was defined when marked elevation of ESR and gadolinium enhancement of synovium on MRI were demonstrated. Markedly increased radiotracer uptake was seen in 10 of 11 rheumatoid arthritic patients with active synovitis whereas normal or mildly increased uptakes were noted in others, including rheumatoid arthritic patient(n=1) and non-rheumatoid patients(n = 3) without active synovitis. This study showed that the localization of involved joints in rheumatoid arthritis could be detected with $^{99m}Tc$-labelled HIG and that the degree of uptake correlated well with the degree and activity of inflammation. In conclusion, $^{99m}Tc$-labelled HIG scan is a useful method in the evaluation of active inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis.