• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.159-164
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• 2008

Objectives : The purpose of this systematic review was to investigate the association between dietary intake of citrus fruits and prostate cancer risk. Methods : Authors searched electronic databases and the reference lists of publications of diet and prostate cancer studies until August 2007. All of the epidemiological studies that obtained individual data on dietary intake of citrus fruits and presented risk estimates of the association between intake of citrus fruits and risk of prostate cancer were identified and included. Using general variance-based methods, study-specific odds ratios (OR)/ relative risk (RR) and associated confidence interval (CI)/ standard error (SE) for highest versus lowest intake of citrus fruits level were extracted from each paper. Results : Eleven articles including six case-control studies, one nested case-control study and four cohort studies, proved eligible. Overall summary OR using random effect model did not show an association in risk of prostate caner with intake of citrus fruits (summary OR=1.03, 95% CI=0.89-1.19) with large heterogeneity across studies that we were unable to explain ($I^2$=67.88%). The summary ORs in case-control studies and cohort studies were 1.10 (95% CI=0.97-1.22) and 1.05 (95% CI=0.96-1.14), respectively. Conclusions : Pooled results from observational studies did not show an association between intake of citrus fruits and the risk of prostate cancer, although results vary substantially across studies.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.754-762
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• 2012

Colbricon Superiore and Inferiore are two small adjacent high-mountain lakes located in the Paneveggio Natural Park (Italy) that offer the rare opportunity to study two iso-ecologic water environments differing only by area and volume in a ratio of 2:1 and 3:1, respectively. We took advantage of this setting to investigate phytoplankton dynamics, compare variability and productivity differences between the two basins, and assess size-dependent issues. The phytoplankton group of the Dinophyceae was chosen as the indicator organisms of ecological perturbation owing to their high sensitivity to environmental variations, as well as their acknowledged nature of versatile proxy to report global climatic changes. The study was conducted for over 10 years with fortnightly samplings. Results indicated that (a) the Dinophyceae communities in the smaller lake were significantly more resistant to changes exerted by the fluctuation of lakewater transparency and pH; and (b) the smaller lake sustained a consistently higher production with an average Dinophyceae density 1.73 fold higher than that of the larger lake. The coefficients of variation show that the chemical parameters in the smaller lake display higher time-related fluctuation while being spatially homogeneous and that such conditions correlate with a higher stability of the Dinophyceae assemblage. The use of this setting is also proposed as a model to test relationships between ecosystem production and physical stability.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.11
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• pp.1219-1227
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• 2011

Due to recent changes in living conditions, people who suffer from vascular disease have been increasing. As a result, several kinds of procedures to treat diseases of the blood vessels are being carried out and the epidemiological analysis and interpretation is needed. In this paper, the mechanical behavior of blood vessels based on hyperelastic model were evaluated. The stress distributions in the arterial walls subjected to both normal blood pressure and high blood pressure are studied along with different opening angles representing as the effect of the residual stress. As a result, when applied to residual stress effects in blood vessels to act maximum stress compared to as the absence of residual stress effect about 50% stresses can be reduced. When high blood pressure was the normal blood pressure acting on the blood vessel wall that twice stress can be confirmed.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.309-316
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• 2006

Objectives: Korean epidemiological studies have used reduced samples according to the subject's characteristics, such as the health services provided, the historical note with asthma, and age, to examine the acute effect of air pollution on asthma using the Korean National Health Insurance records. However, there have been few studies on whether the effects shown in these reduced samples are different from those of all samples. This study compared the effects of air pollution on asthma attacks in three reduced samples with those of entire samples. Methods: The air pollution data for $PM_{10},\;CO,\;SO_2,\;NO_2,\;and\;O_3$, and weather conditions including temperature, relative humidity, and air pressure in Seoul, 2002, were obtained from outdoor monitoring stations in Seoul. The emergency hospital visits with an asthma attack in Seoul, 2002 were extracted from the Korean National Health Insurance records. From these, the reduced samples were created by health service, historical notes with asthma, and age. A case-crossover design was adopted and the acute effects of air pollution on asthma were estimated after adjusting for weather, time trend, and seasonality. The model was applied to each reduced sample and the entire sample. Results: With respect to the health service, the effects on outpatients were similar to those for the total sample but were different for inpatients. These similar effect sizes were also observed in the reduced samples according to the historical note with asthma and age. The relative risks of $PM_{10},\;CO,\;SO_2,\;NO_2,\;and\;O_3$, among the reduced and entire samples were 1.03, 1.04-1.05, 1.02-1.03, 1.04-1.06, and 1.10-1.17, respectively. Conclusions: There was no clear evidence to show a difference between the reduced samples and the entire samples.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.257-264
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• 2010

Objectives: An accurate estimation of cancer patients is the basis of epidemiological studies and health services. However in Korea, cancer patients visiting out-patient clinics are usually ruled out of such studies and so these studies are suspected of underestimating the cancer patient population. The purpose of this study is to construct a more complete, hospital-based cancer patient registry using multiple sources of medical information. Methods: We constructed a cancer patient detection algorithm using records from various sources that were obtained from both the in-patients and out-patients seen at Asan Medical Center (AMC) for any reason. The medical data from the potentially incident cancer patients was reviewed four months after first being detected by the algorithm to determine whether these patients actually did or did not have cancer. Results: Besides the traditional practice of reviewing the charts of in-patients upon their discharge, five more sources of information were added for this algorithm, i.e., pathology reports, the national severe disease registry, the reason for treatment, prescriptions of chemotherapeutic agents and radiation therapy reports. The constructed algorithm was observed to have a PPV of 87.04%. Compared to the results of traditional practice, 36.8% of registry failures were avoided using the AMC algorithm. Conclusions: To minimize loss in the cancer registry, various data sources should be utilized, and the AMC algorithm can be a successful model for this. Further research will be required in order to apply novel and innovative technology to the electronic medical records system in order to generate new signals from data that has not been previously used.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.370-378
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• 2019

The hepatic ischemic model has recently been widely used for the epidemiological study of ischemic reperfusion injury. This study was carried out to investigate the protective effect of vanillin, which is known to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, against hepatic and renal injury using an ischemia-reperfusion rat model, and we also investigated the mechanism related to vanillins' protective effect. The test material was administered at a concentration of 100 mg/kg for 3 days, followed by ligation of the liver for 60 minutes to induce ischemia reperfusion. As control groups, there was a negative control, sham control and ischemia-reperfusion-only ischemia reperfusion control, and the controls groups were compared with the drug administration group. In the vanillin group, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) activities were significantly inhibited compared with the AST and ALT activities of the ischemia-reperfusion group, and histopathological examination showed significant reduction of both inflammation and necrosis. The malondialdehyde (MDA) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) levels were significantly different from the ischemia-reperfusion group. In conclusion, vanillin showed a hepatocyte protective action by alleviating the cellular inflammation and cell necrosis caused by hepatic ischemia-reperfusion, and vanillin mitigated inflammatory changes in the kidney glomeruli and distal tubules. The protective effect is considered to be caused by vanillin's antioxidant function. Further studies such as on cell death and possibly vanillin's same effect on damaged tissue will be necessary for clinical applications such as organ transplantation.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.58-70
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• 2022

The emergency preparedness exercise currently conducted by the government has been conducted as a message-based exercise for more than 50 years. Therefore, in this study, a simulation-based maintenance practice model was developed focusing on infectious disease situations, and the possibility of a training system applying scientific techniques was presented. As a result, First, a simulatioon logic assuming an infectious disease outbreak situation was developed. The situation of an infectious disease outbreak was made to occur when measures are not taken within 24 hours for the death due to disease, and when appropriate measures are not taken for contaminated food (24 hours), drinking water (12 hours), and drinking water shortage (24 hours). Second, in order to implement the simulation logic, simulation engine SW was developed for emergency medical team, epidemiological investigation team, dead burial team, quarantine and disinfection team, etc., and situation map SW was developed so that these contents could be expressed in the situation map. As suggested in this paper, if scientific techniques are applied to the simulation-based government practice model to expand the scope, training will be possible by creating practical situations that can occur in the real world, and the Chungmu plan and various emergency preparedness plans will be verified.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.247-256
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• 2017

Objectives: The deaths of Korean victims exposed to the disinfectant CMIT/MIT have remained unresolved. This is mainly due to a lack of concordance between the few available toxicity tests and the abundant epidemiological data, making it difficult to establish a cause-and-effect relationship. Therefore, this study was carried out to investigate any potential associations between CMIT/MIT exposure and death. Methods: Groups of experimental and control C57BL/6 mice were instilled (in the trachea) with chloromethylisothiazolinone/methylisothiazolinone (CMIT/MIT) using a visual instillobot. CMIT/MIT was instilled over a period of three days and eight weeks, respectively, to achieve acute and chronic exposures. A threshold dose-response model was applied for estimating the threshold level as one line of evidence for a causal association between CMIT/MIT and death. Results: An acute exposure of 1.2 mg ai/kg/day of CMIT/MIT was estimated to reflect the threshold for death. The dose-response curve with this threshold showed a very steep slope and a narrow range of CMIT/MIT exposures. The narrow range of CMIT/MIT exposures, in particular, indicated an evident boundary between survival and death, thus implicating a strong causal association. A similar threshold dose-response relationship observed following acute exposure was also seen following chronic exposure to CMIT/MIT. Airborne disinfectant exposure was visible as minimal or mild lung damage with no fibrosis, as shown by histopathological tests. However, many observations are considered to be functional respiratory tract or lung failure due to death, as observed in necropsies of the mice that died due to CMIT/MIT exposures. Conclusions: There are two strong lines of evidence for a causal association between death and CMIT/MIT exposure: 1) The threshold dose-response curve, with a very steep slope and a narrow range of CMIT/MIT exposures showing a visible boundary between survival and death; and 2) many cases of functional respiratory or lung failure.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.2597-2604
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• 2012

Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) is an essential enzyme involved in folate metabolism; a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) C677T has been reported to be linked with altered incidences of several diseases. We here conducted a meta-analysis of 15 published epidemiological studies with a total of 7306 cases and 8062 controls to evaluate its association with prostate cancer risk with overall and subgroup analyses. No statistical relationship was found overall with any genetic model (TT vs. CC: OR = 0.80, 95%CI = [0.62, 1.04], P = 0.094; CT vs. CC: OR = 0.97, 95%CI = [0.84; 1.12], P = 0.667; Dominant: OR = 0.94, 95%CI = [0.82; 1.07], P = 0.343; Recessive: OR = 0.81, 95%CI = [0.64; 1.04], P = 0.104), but after the exclusion of several studies, we could observe the homozygote TT to confer less susceptibility to prostate cancer in carriers; moreover, different effects of the polymorphism on prostate cancer risk was detected from subgroup analysis stratified by participants' residential region: significant reduced prostate cancer risk was found to be associated with the polymorphism from Asian studies (TT vs. CC: OR = 0.47, 95%CI = [0.33; 0.67], P < 0.001; CT vs. CC: OR = 0.73, 95%CI = [0.60; 0.90], P = 0.002; Dominant: OR = 0.67, 95%CI = [0.56; 0.82], P < 0.001; Recessive: OR = 0.55, 95%CI = [0.40; 0.76], P < 0.001) while studies from Europe indicated a slight increased risk under dominant model with marginal significance (OR = 1.14, 95%CI = [0.99; 1.30], P = 0.064). Moreover, the protective effect of the polymorphism against prostate cancer was also shown by studies performed in yellow Asians (TT vs. CC: OR = 0.48, 95%CI = [0.31; 0.75], P = 0.001; CT vs. CC: OR = 0.68, 95%CI = [0.51; 0.90], P = 0.006; Dominant: OR = 0.63, 95%CI = [0.48; 0.82], P < 0.001; Recessive: OR = 0.57, 95%CI = [0.39; 0.84], P = 0.004). We propose that these phenomena should be viewed with the consideration of folate metabolism profile and different gene background as well as living habits of different populations, and more relevant studies should be conducted to confirm our hypothesis and provide a comprehensive and clear picture concerning this topic.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.632-643
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• 2021

The purpose of this study was to examine how the level of self-compassion of correctional workers influenced depression and the simple and double mediating effects of job stress and job autonomy. Although correctional officers experience high levels of stress and depression, there are limited strategies to protect their job performance. The total of 210 correctional workers in S. Korea were included in the final analysis using SPSS PROCESS Macro model 6. For the analysis, Korean Self-Compassion Scale (K-SCS), Korean occupational stress scale (KOSS), and Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CESDS) were used. The results of the study were as follows. First, the correlation analysis showed statistically significant relationships between the variables(p<.01). Second, the simple mediating effect of job autonomy was found in the relationship between the self-compassion and depression as well as the double mediating effect of job stress and job autonomy. The influences of low level of self-compassion on mental health (depression) could be modified by improving the level of work related empowerment (job autonomy) as a protective factor. Based on the results of the study, the further study suggestions and limitations were discussed.