• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.171-177
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• 2017

Objective: The study purpose was to develop a drug information leaflet for the elderly and to evaluate it with performance-based user-testing. Methods: We performed a stratified randomized controlled trial. We recruited 62 elderly patients with age of 65 or above who were taking antidiabetic medications at the point of participating and excluded those who suffered illiteracy. We randomly allocated them into the intervention group with a leaflet for the elderly and the control group with a leaflet for the general public. Main outcome measures were to 'be able to find information' and to 'be able to understand information.' We measured outcome variables by employing performance-based user-testing and analyzed data to find any differences between two groups with t-tests, chi-squared tests or Fisher's exact tests accordingly. Results: More participants in the intervention group understood how to store their medications than those in the control group (intervention group 93% vs. control group 70%; p=0.02). There were no significant differences in other information items between two groups. Mostly 'being able to understand information' was lower than 'being able to find information.' The gaps between two outcome variables were about 10% in the intervention group and about 18% in the control group. The lowest understanding was observed in information relating to drug names and their potential adverse events. Conclusion: Without providing personalized drug information, it might be hard for the elderly to improve their drug knowledge even with leaflets that were developed specifically for the elderly.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.250-252
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• 2014

Lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-$PLA_2$) is a crucial enzyme in atherosclerosis as a potential drug target. The most remarkable Lp-$PLA_2$ inhibitory drug is Darapladib. We determined the binding pose of Darapladib to Lp-$PLA_2$ through docking study. Darapladib formed two hydrogen bonding interactions with the side chain of Tyr160 and Gln352 and several pi-pi interactions with aromatic and aliphatic hydrophobic residues of Lp-$PLA_2$. It is known that the dietylpropan-amine moiety of Darapladib has influence on the improvement of its oral bioavailability and we supposed this in our docking results.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.164-175
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• 2002

Background : The purpose of this study was to investigate the current status of medication compliance of outpatients and to analyze the factors contributing to medication non-compliance Methods : Telephone survey was conducted to the 1,000 outpatients who visited medical institutions during the period from January 2002 to April 2002. Subjects were randomly selected from the telephone directories of the nation, and the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents such as age, gender and region were matched based on those of outpatients in 2001. Results : The results of survey revealed that those who complied with doctors' regimen in the right way accounted for 82.4%. The compliance increased with the strong belief in the medication, less unwanted side effects and inconvenience, more severity of disease, and lower perceived health status. Compliance rate was also higher in the patients group who experienced the drug education by the pharmacists than those who did not. Conclusion : In order to improve drug compliance, drug information on efficacy, adverse reaction, drug interactions, and basic disease information are to be provided to the patients. Drug education needs to be focused not only on providing knowledge of drugs and diseases but also changing attitude on drug use of the patients.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.6-23
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• 2015

This study develops an effective method for sentiment analysis of user-generated content on drug review websites, which has not been investigated extensively compared to other general domains, such as product reviews. A clause-level sentiment analysis algorithm is developed since each sentence can contain multiple clauses discussing multiple aspects of a drug. The method adopts a pure linguistic approach of computing the sentiment orientation (positive, negative, or neutral) of a clause from the prior sentiment scores assigned to words, taking into consideration the grammatical relations and semantic annotation (such as disorder terms) of words in the clause. Experiment results with 2,700 clauses show the effectiveness of the proposed approach, and it performed significantly better than the baseline approaches using a machine learning approach. Various challenging issues were identified and discussed through error analysis. The application of the proposed sentiment analysis approach will be useful not only for patients, but also for drug makers and clinicians to obtain valuable summaries of public opinion. Since sentiment analysis is domain specific, domain knowledge in drug reviews is incorporated into the sentiment analysis algorithm to provide more accurate analysis. In particular, MetaMap is used to map various health and medical terms (such as disease and drug names) to semantic types in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Semantic Network.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.156-161
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• 2007

Rapid advances in pharmacogenomic research have provided important information to improve drug selection, to maximize drug efficacy, and to minimize drug adverse reaction. The SNPs that are the most abundant type of genetic variants have been proven as valid biomarkers to give information on the prediction of pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic properties of drugs based on genotype. In order to elucidate a correlation between SNPs of calcium channel encoding gene and adverse reactions of calcium channel blockers, we investigated SNPs in CACNA1C gene known as a binding site of calcium channel blocker. 96 patients with hypertension who had taken or are taking an antihypertensive drug, 1,4-dihydropyridine (DHP) were included for analysis. These patients were composed of 47 patients with adverse drug reactions (ADR) such as edema from calcium channel blockers and 49 patients without ADR as a control group. The exons encoding the drug binding sites were amplified by PCR using specific primers, and SNPs were analyzed by direct sequencing. We found that there was no SNP in the exons encoding DHP binding site, but four novel SNPs in the exon-intron junction region. However, four novel SNPs were not associated with the ADR of calcium channel blockers. In conclusion, this study showed that ADR from calcium channel blockers may not be caused by SNPs of the binding sites of calcium channel blockers in CACNA1C gene.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.55-62
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• 2013

Objective: This study aims to assess the following issues - acquisition level in terms of the information on frequently used drugs of youth, access paths for the information, actual status of the use of drugs frequently used by youth, types of the used drugs, drug abuse among youth, and the consequent drawbacks. This study also takes aims at suggestion of correct role of pharmacists in consideration of drug abuse among youth. Methods: During the period from August 1, 2011 to October 31, 2012, a research design and a question development have been conducted. To the students of the schools that were randomly selected (elementary school's N=99, middle school's N=106, high school's N=115 and university's N=115), it was asked to complete given questionnaire from August 1, 2012 to August 31, 2012. During the period from September 1, 2012 to October 30, 2012, the questionnaires were collected back and the analysis and evaluation of them were carried out. Results: Drugs known to the respondents were a total of 115 different medicines and most of the drugs belonged to over-the-counter drugs. The most well known drug was pain reliever and the second most familiar drug was wound ointment. Most of the respondents found the drugs through direct use and advertisement. In everyday life, more than half of the respondents were using over-the-counter drugs as well as health supplements. The most commonly used drug was analgesic drug. It was showed that the respondents also frequently used the drugs for improving their grades and appearances. It was shown that among the cases of drug use, there were also the cases of misuse and abuse of drugs for the respondents or people around them. Reliability of pharmacists was shown to be high and many students were also satisfied with the pharmacists' guidance for medication. Conclusion: Currently many students are using different kinds of drug in daily life, and there is a possibility that the risk of misuse and abuse of drugs will be increased. Those age groups can easily engage in bad habit of drug use. Thus, promotion on accurate drug information has to be strengthened, and pharmacists are required to conduct correct guidance for drug user's medication in terms of use amount, usage, interactions among different drugs, and potential risks.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.327-333
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• 2013

Background: Antihistamine and anti-allergy medications are widely used during pregnancy. Reading label information is one of the easiest ways to get safety information. But there are content gaps among countries. Objective: To compare the risk level and the recommendation level of antihistamine/anti-allergy drug's label information in pregnant women among Korea, the USA, the UK, and Japan. Method: Study drugs of antihistamine/anti-allergy medications were selected according to Korea drug classification codes. Based on the label information of selected product, risk level was classified into 5 categories as follows: 'Definite', 'Probable', 'Possible', and 'Unlikely', 'Unclassified' according to the level of evidence. Recommendation level was classified into 4 categories as follows: 'Contraindicated', 'Cautious', 'Compatible', and 'Unclassified'. Frequency and proportion were presented according to the each category. To estimate agreement of each category among 4 countries, percent agreement and kappa (k) coefficient were calculated. Results: Total 13 drug ingredients were selected for antihistamine/anti-allergy medications. In risk level, Korea (46%) and Japan (69%) were mostly classified in the category of 'Unclassified', but 'Unlikely' category was more frequent in the UK (62%) and the USA (46%). In recommendation level, the proportion of 'Contraindicated' was highest in Korea (46%) compared to other countries. In contrast, the category of 'Cautious' was 77%-85% in the USA, the UK, and Japan. The percent agreement for risk level was highest in the USA-UK (54%). The recommendation level of Korea-USA showed lowest agreement for percent agreement (46%) and kappa coefficient (k=0.02). Conclusion: We confirmed the differences among safety information provided by four different countries. 'Contraindicated' was more likely in Korea compared with other countries.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.112-124
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• 2014

This study aimed to develop a regulation system for off-label drug use to secure the safe use of marketed drugs. We searched governmental documents for national and global regulating systems of off-label drug uses and a body of academic literature to explore current regulating trends. We included European Union, United Kingdom, United States of America, Australia and Japan, and critically reviewed the regulation of off-label drug use in four issues, which were a regulatory structure, safety control before and after off-label use, and information management. The findings of the present investigation called for several measures in off-label drug uses: enhancing prescribers' self-regulation, providing up-to-date information to prescribers for evidence-based practice and to patients for their informed consent, making evidence with scientific rigor, building an official registering process for off-label use in good quality and extending the role of pharmaceutical industry in pharmacovigilance. At last, we proposed a new system so as to regulate and evaluate off-label drug uses both at national and institutional level. In the new system, we suggested a clear-cut definition for clinical evidence that applicants would submit. We newly introduced an official 'Off-Label Drug Use Report' to evaluate the safety and clinical efficacy of a given off-label drug use. In addition, we developed an algorism of the regulation of off-label drug use within an institution to help set up the culture of evidence-based practices in off-label drug uses.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.115-123
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• 2016

In this study, we collect various side effect pairs which are appeared frequently at many drugs, and select side effect pairs that have higher severity. For every selected side effect pair, we extract common genetic networks which are shared by side effects' genes and drugs' target genes based on PPI(Protein-Protein Interaction) network. For this work, firstly, we gather drug related data, side effect data and PPI data. Secondly, for extracting common genetic network, we find shortest paths between drug target genes and side effect genes based on PPI network, and integrate these shortest paths. Thirdly, we develop a classification model which uses this common genetic network as a classifier. We calculate similarity score between the common genetic network and genetic network of a drug for classifying the drug. Lastly, we validate our classification model by means of AUC(Area Under the Curve) value.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Computer Information Conference
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• 2019.01a
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• pp.33-36
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• 2019

DDI 추출은 생물 의학 문헌으로부터 약물-약물 상호작용(Drug-Drug Interaction) 관계를 추출하는 작업으로, 기존에 알려지지 않은 인체 내 약물 간의 효과 또는 부작용 정보를 제공하는데 중요한 역할을 한다. 본 연구에서는 PCNN 모델을 활용하여 특징 추출 과정을 자동화하고 약물 개체 간의 구조 정보를 포착해 개체 간 관계를 효율적으로 추출하였으며, 생물 의학 문헌에서 쓰이는 생소한 용어를 보다 풍부하게 표현하기 위해 5가지 버전의 단어 임베딩을 PCNN의 채널로 사용하였다. 본 연구에서 제안하는 MC-PCNN 모델의 성능 평가를 위해 DDI'13 Corpus 데이터를 사용하여 비교 실험을 진행하였으며, 그 결과 기존 연구보다 $F_1$ 점수 기준 최대 2.05%p 향상된 성능을 보이며 DDI 관계 추출에서 효과적인 방법론임을 확인하였다.