• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
• /
• v.30 no.3
• /
• pp.121-128
• /
• 2023

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the recent age distribution of Mycoplasma pneumoniae in patients with respiratory infections and the differences in diagnostic usefulness according to the methods used in these patients. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of patients aged ≤18 years with respiratory infectious diseases who underwent polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or a specific immunoglobulin M (IgM) test between July 2016 and February 2019. The diagnosis of M. pneumoniae infection was confirmed by a positive result in the PCR or IgM test. Results: Of the 2,721 patients tested for M. pneumoniae, 2,197 underwent IgM, and 1,144 underwent PCR, with positivity rates of 17% and 20%, respectively. Among the 620 patients tested for both IgM and PCR tests simultaneously, 35% had M. pneumoniae infection, with 14% under 1 year old and 13% under 1-2 years old. The positive rate increased with age in both tests. Higher positive rates were observed in the IgM test before 3 years of age and in the PCR test after 3 years of age. The agreement rate between the two tests was 77.9% (Cohen's kappa 0.402). Conclusions: As age increased, the rates of M. pneumoniae infection also increased. In patients under 2 years of age, 4¬-14% of infections were confirmed depending on the method used. The moderate agreement between the PCR and IgM tests suggests that the simultaneous use of PCR and the IgM test for the early diagnosis should be approached with caution.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
• /
• v.49 no.3
• /
• pp.239-247
• /
• 2017

Among the commonly known tools to diagnose diabetes are fasting plasma glucose (FPG), HbA1c., and OGTT known as gold standard. However, there can be many disagreements on the ways to diagnose diabetes. In this study, we examined the differences of the types of diabetes according to the applicability of FPG and HbA1c. Moreover, we evaluated the concordance of diagnosis. We excluded subjects with missing glucose and HbA1c data, as well as those previously diagnosed with diabetes, and those who fasted less than 8 hours. The data of 4,502 subjects (1,956 men and 2,546 women) from the 2015 KNHNES were analyzed. We divided these patients into three categories which are normal, prediabetes, and diabetes, based on the FPG and HbA1c. In men, the number of subjects with FPG ranging from 100 to 125 mg/dL and HbA1c ${\geq}6.5%$ was 23 out of 664, and the number of subjects with FPG < 126 mg/dL and HbA1c ${\geq}6.5%$ was 39 out of 86 newly diagnosed diabetes patients. The concordance rate was as follows: Normal 80.3%, prediabetes 44.9%, and diabetes 54.7%. The coefficient of Cohen's Kappa was 0.322 in men and 0.362 in women; this suggests that both gender showed a low concordance rate. However, when we divided them into two categories (nondiabetes and diabetes), Kappa was 0.582 in men and 0.637 in women, showing a relatively high concordance rate. While all subjects with FPG ${\geq}126mg/dL$ showed a significantly high HOMA IR, all subjects with FPG < 126 mg/dL showed a significantly high QUICKI. Considering the low concordance rate for the diagnosis of diabetes and characteristic of diagnostic tests, it is necessary to combine the related tests for diagnosing diabetes.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.93-103
• /
• 2011

Purpose: This study was conducted to assess reported industrial accidents and non-reported industrial accidents that took place in 63 small and medium sized manufacturing industries located in Daegu and Gyeongsangbuk-do in the year of 2009. Methods: During the period from January to December 2009, the number of industrial accidents that happened each month was examined according to the characteristics of industry, industrial accidents, workers with industrial accidents, treatment, as well as causes and treatment of the non-reported. Results: The total incidence rate of industrial accidents was 3.48%, of which only 0.31% reported. The incidence rate in packing and distribution among manufacturing workplace, and in the industry with 50~99 employees, was higher than the other groups. Of the non-reported, over 80% in required under 10 days of medical treatment, and 56% in required cost of less than 100,000 won. Kappa values were 0.771 concurrence in opinions for causes of non-reported, and 0.571 concurrence in opinions for management termination of non-reported between the employees and employer. Conclusion: It is suggested that more supportive policy and precise, nationwide survey on the actual state of industrial accidents, including non-reported cases, be implemented to efficiently manage industrial accidents.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
• /
• v.27 no.2 s.66
• /
• pp.196-210
• /
• 2006

Objectives : This study aimed to find the curative effect of Gamitongkyutang distillate in mice with allergic rhinitis. Metbods : Forty mice were divided into four groups: the normal group, the control group (allergic rhinitis elicited group), the sample I group (Gamitongkyutang treated group after allergic rhinitis elicitation) and the sample II group (distillate of Gamitongkyutang treated group after allergic rhinitis elicitation). Indexes of AR were investigated such as the histological changes of the nasal mucosa, the changes of eosinophil count, the changes of interleukin-4(IL-4) secretion in the intranasal mucosa, the alteration of inducible nitric oxide synthase(iNOS) mRNA expression and the distribution of the nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kB). ANOVA test was used for statistical analysis (p<0.05). Results : Loss of the cilium and the mucous secretion in the sample I and II groups was rare when compared to the control group. The segment of eosinophil was significantly decreased in the sample I and II groups when compared to the control group (p<0.05). A significant decrease of IL-4 mRNA expression was observed in the sample I and II groups when compared with the control group (p<0.05). Inhibition of iNOS induced by NF-kB p50 in the sample I and II groups was significantly superior to that in the control group (p<0.05). DGT and GT didn't affect AST and ALT. Conclusions : GT was superior to DGT in the IL-4 secretion, eosinophil levels and iNOS production. However, considering the difficulty in taking herbal medicine, the DGT has a meaningful curative effect in mice with allergic rhinitis.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
• /
• v.32 no.11
• /
• pp.897-905
• /
• 2008

Selective catalytic reduction(SCR) is known as one of promising methods for reducing $NO_x$ emissions in diesel exhaust gases. $NO_x$ emissions react with ammonia in the catalyst surface of SCR system at working temperature of catalyst. In this study, to raise the reacting temperature when the exhaust gas temperature is too low, a heater is located at the bottom of SCR reactor. At an ambient temperature, ammonia is radially injected perpendicular to the exhaust gas flow at inlet pipe and uniformly mixed in the mixing area after being impinged against the wall. To predict the turbulent model inside the mixing area of SCR system, the standard ${\kappa}\;-\;{\varepsilon}$ model is applied. This work investigates numerically the effects of induced heat on the gaseous flow. The results show that the Taylor-$G{\ddot{o}}rtler$ type vortex is generated after the gaseous flow impinges the wall in which these vortices influence the temperature distribution. The addition of heat disturbs the flow structure in bottom area and then stretching flow occurs. Vorticity strand is also formed when heat is continuously increased. Constriction process takes place, however, when a further heat input over a critical temperature is increased and finally forms shed vortex which is disconnected from the vorticity strand. The strong vortex restricts the heat transport in the gaseous flow.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
• /
• v.15 no.1
• /
• pp.72-79
• /
• 2000

In recent, occupational diseases in harmful working places become a social issue. It is the well-known fact that a respiration in polluted working places exert a serious effect on health of workers. Accordingly, the cutting off contaminants air originally is the best way to improve working environments. In these cases, ventilation systems should be essentially installed to dilute or exhaust the contaminated indoor air. In this study, we investigated the characteristics of ventilation system of the noxious gas in working indoor places with natural ventilation by using COMET. The numerical simulations were carried out the natural ventilation with two phase(air, dust). For turbulent flow, Reynolds stresses were closed by the standard $\kappa$-$\varepsilon$ model. The results are as follows ; 1) In the natural exhaust in the working place, the flows of the central region have a more rapid velocity vector than the right and left one. 2) Numerical results show that the distribution of contaminants concentration have greater influence on convection than the case of diffusion by government of velocity vectors. 3) To observe the velocity variation with distance, three location of distance are considered. As results, it shows that the velocity are 0.075(m/s) at y=5(m), 10(m) and mean concentration are raised 10.6% at y=5(m), 10(m). 4) We have presented the useful data for the adequate counterplan in the harmful working places by carrying out the various investigation of the natural ventilation.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
• /
• v.22 no.9
• /
• pp.1250-1256
• /
• 2018

Recently, wireless networks are becoming an important infrastructure for the critical large-scale applications such as cyber-physical systems and next generation industrial automations. However, the fundamental performance uncertainty of wireless networks may incur the serious instability problem of the overall systems. This paper proposes the proactive network optimizer to guarantee the application demands without any real-time link monitoring information of the networks. In particularly, the proposed proactive optimizer is the cross-layer approach to jointly optimize the routing path and traffic distribution in order to guarantee the performance demand within a maximum k number of link faults. Through the simulations, the proposed proactive network optimizer provides better robustness than the traditional existing reactive networks. Furthermore, the proactive network does not expose to the major weakness of the reactive networks such as the performance degradation due to the erroneous link monitoring information and the network reconfiguration cost.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
• /
• v.15 no.5
• /
• pp.694-703
• /
• 2010

Recent studies have reported that a subset of obese individuals who were metabolically healthy but obese had more favorable clinical outcomes than obese subjects with metabolic disturbances. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the distribution and agreement of obesity subtypes according to body mass index (BMI) and metabolic syndrome (MS). Furthermore, we examined the differences of nutrient intake among the groups. Data was analyzed for 1,095 female subjects older than 40 years using Korean National Health and Nutrition Survey in 2008. The degree of obesity was classified by two methods, using BMI (obese ${\geq}\;25\;kg/m^2$, not obese < $25\;kg/m^2$) and MS (meet ${\geq}\;3$ criteria among 5 index: waist circumference, triglyceride, glucose, HDL-cholesterol and blood pressure). Subjects were divided into 4 groups according to $2{\times}2$ cross table: non-obese without MS, non-obese with MS, obese without MS and obese with MS. Nutrient intakes were compared among 4 groups. The results showed that the proportions of non-obese without MS, non-obese with MS, obese without MS and obese with MS were 47.6%, 13.6%, 16.6%, and 22.2% of total subjects, respectively. The agreement (kappa value) of two methods was 0.354 (fair) in total subjects, 0.365 (fair) in 40-60 year old subjects and 0.304 (fair) in ${\geq}\;61$ year old subjects. In ${\geq}\;61$ years old subjects, intakes of percentage energy from carbohydrate, percentage of energy from fat, calcium, phosphorous, sodium, vitamin A, carotene, thiamine, riboflavin and niacin were significantly different among the groups. In contrast, the subjects of 40-60 years old, no differences in nutrient intakes were observed. In conclusion, there were differences in nutrient intakes among the groups subdivided by obesity and MS, especially in elderly female subjects. Individualized dietary guideline for subtype of obesity will be needed to treat metabolic disturbance of obesity.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
• /
• v.28 no.5
• /
• pp.414-422
• /
• 2020

Fangchinoline (FAN) is a bisbenzylisoquinoline alkaloid that is widely known for its anti-tumor properties. The goal of this study is to examine the effects of FAN on arthritis and the possible pathways it acts on. Human fibroblast-like synovial cells (FLS), carrageenan/kaolin arthritis rat model (C/K), and collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) mice model were used to establish the efficiency of FAN in arthritis. Human FLS cells were treated with FAN (1, 2.5, 5, 10 µM) 1 h before IL-1β (10 ng/mL) stimulation. Cell viability, reactive oxygen species measurement, and western blot analysis of inflammatory mediators and the MAPK and NF-κB pathways were performed. In the animal models, after induction of arthritis, the rodents were given 10 and 30 mg/kg of FAN orally 1 h before conducting behavioral experiments such as weight distribution ratio, knee thickness measurement, squeaking score, body weight measurement, paw volume measurement, and arthritis index measurement. Rodent knee joints were also analyzed histologically through H&E staining and safranin staining. FAN decreased the production of inflammatory cytokines and ROS in human FLS cells as well as the phosphorylation of the MAPK pathway and NF-κB pathway in human FLS cells. The behavioral parameters in the C/K rat model and CIA mouse model and inflammatory signs in the histological analysis were found to be ameliorated in FAN-treated groups. Cartilage degradation in CIA mice knee joints were shown to have been suppressed by FAN. These findings suggest that fangchinoline has the potential to be a therapeutic source for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
• /
• v.33 no.5
• /
• pp.288-294
• /
• 2019

Gardenia jasminoides is an herbal medicine that treats obesity and dampness-phlegm. This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of Gardenia jasminoides on insulin resistance induced by Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). 8-week-old C57BL/6 male mice were divided into three groups: control group (Ctrl), high-fat diet group (HFF), and high fat diet with Gardenia jasminoides extract administration group (GJT). Each 10 mice was allocated to each group (a total of 30 mice). All mice were allowed to eat fat-rich diet freely throughout the experiment. To examine the effect of Gardenia jasminoides, we observed weight changes, lipid blot distributions, PPAR-${\gamma}$, p-IkB, p-JNK in liver tissue, total cholesterol, and glucose levels in serum. Comparing of body weight measurements between 3 groups, in the GJT group, weight gain was significantly suppressed compared to the HFF group. The distribution of lipid blots and positive reaction of PPAR-${\gamma}$ were significantly lower in GJT group. The expression levels of p-$I{\kappa}B$ and p-JNK that plays critical roles in the development of insulin resistance were significantly decreased by GJ treatment. Total cholesterol and glucose levels in serum were also significantly lower in GJT group. Gardenia jasminoides has the effect of improving non - alcoholic fatty liver induced insulin resistance through the regulation of lipid metabolism.