• Journal of Life Science
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.1127-1133
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• 2011

Exercise has been shown to positively influence quality of life for elderly men with a wide variety of medical illnesses. Tai chi exercise, a slow and graceful form of exercise and meditation, has especially been offered as the ideal exercise for elderly men with diverse conditions, such as people suffering from chronic heart failure or breast cancer survivors. In one recent study, Tai Chi was found to improve exercise capacity, sleep stability, and quality of life in heart failure patients including elderly men. The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of 16 weeks of Tai Chi exercise (3 times/week, 60 min/trial, 40-50% HRR) on physical and physiological changes. Sixty four healthy volunteers without any particular disease between the ages of 65 and 79 years participated in the study. The results were as follows; Significant changes of cardiac endurance, strength, muscle endurance, flexibility and balance were observed following 16 weeks of Tai Chi exercise (p<0.05). In addition, significant changes of diastolic blood pressure, body fat and fat-free mass were observed following 16 weeks of Tai Chi exercise (p<0.05). These findings suggest that a brief period of Tai Chi exercise is beneficial, particularly to elderly men. It is especially beneficial for body composition, and physical fitness factors such as cardiopulmonary endurance, muscle endurance, flexibility, and balance. Further study is needed in this area for specific disease patients.

• Korean Journal of Hospice Care
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.87-111
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• 2002

The hospice activities in Korea have still stood in the premature stage, although the contemporary hospice program, which professionally accommodates terminally ill patients, appeared in the history 35 years ago. Especially, the availability of the facility hospice is not only poor in number, but also lack of a guideline for the conduct of the facility. Saemmul Hospice has keenly felt the necessity of more facility hospices and has interchanged experiences and informations with people interested in hospice. However, the number of facilities has fallen short of one's expectations, and many problems have been revealed in order to maintain the operation. This paper was written in order to improve these atmospheres and to help more terminally ill cancer patients properly. This paper clarifies in detail the principle of management, the method of practice in each departments of Saemmul Hospice, expected effects and supplemental items. We try to provide concrete and practical informations and to help extensively for all peoples who are to begin or currently working. 1.Facility: It secures, maintain, and manage the hospice environment for all around care of patients effectively. 2.Education and Volunteer: It trains and manages hospice volunteers devoted to hospice. 3.Financial: It manages donation by healthy soul with an effective method. 4.Administration and Organization: It executes the administration efficiently and constitutes the organization to operate. 5.Medical and Nursing: It offers the maximum professional supports to a hospital. 6.Medicine and alternative medicine: It improves the quality of life of patients by medical and pharmaceutical approach and by other possible methods available. 7.Nutrition: It helps patients to have diets in accord with the order of the creation. 8.Belief: It offers spiritual care which allows the profound relationship with God. 9. Funeral ceremonies: Funeral ceremonies may heal grieves of families faced with their deaths. 10. Bereaved families: It supports the families after the deaths of patients. 11.Reception and consultation: It seeks to help the patients who meet the purposes for which Saemmul Hospice is established. 12.Publication: It allows publicity activities for Saemmul Hospice. Facility hospice programs are able to overcome the disadvantages that the other type of the hospice possess, like as the economic burdens of the families, and the patients' losses of comforts of home after being transferred to a hospital. Facility hospice can provide home atmosphere with professional manpower and facilities like hospital to the patients. Therefore, it can also improve patients' qualities of life and make them comfortable death. We anticipate that the hospice program in Korea would be more active to let more people be indebted to maintain the nobel human dignity and to cross beautifully in the most painful process of dying in the journey of their lives.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.194-208
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• 2003

Objective : Recently, many studies have showed the evidences of the effect of acupuncture treatment through scientific methods. We performed electro-acupuncture on Taixi(K3) and observed the change of brain activity using fMRI. Methods : To see the effect of electro-acupuncture stimulation on Taixi(K3), the experiment was carried out on twelve healthy volunteers, using the gradient echo sequence with the 3.0T whole-body fMRI system(ISOL). After the needle insertion on K3, 2 Hz of electric stimulation was given for 30 seconds, repeated five times, with 30 seconds' intervals. Result & Conclusions : Unilateral electro-acupuncture stimulation on K3 increased the brain activity in Brodman Area 8, 6, 9, 13, 21, 22, 38, 40, 43, 2, 5, 10, 20, 24, 32, 34, 37, 39, 41, 42. and decreased the brain activity in Brodman Area 9, 13, 38, 22, 31, 3, 6, 10, 21, 25, 29, 30. Group Averaged Brain activity induced by Unilateral Electro-acupuncture Stimulation on K3 was increased in Brodman Area 10, 22, 42, 43, 44 and was decreased inn Brodman Area 6 and pyrogen test of Bee venom. Bilateral electro-acupuncture stimulation on k3 increased the brain activity in Brodman Area 22, 3, 19, 4, 13, 17, 21, 41, 42, 2, 5, 6, 7, 18, 23, 29, 30, 31, 40 and decreased the brain activity in Brodman Area 18, 6, 39, 4, 13, 2, 10, 19, 36, 40, 45, 46, 47. Group Averaged Brain activity induced by Bilateral Electro-acupuncture Stimulation on K3 was increased in Brodman Area 22, 13, 4, 3, 29, 38, 43 and was decreased in Brodman Area 18, 3, 19, 22, 39. Motor Stimulation activated Brodmann Area 6, 43, 18.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2001

The prior purpose of this study is to introduce a optical biopsy and evaluate whether the optical biopsy, real-time, non-invasive technique, is a reliable tool to assess response to radiotherapy Four healthy volunteers, and four patients with inflammatory conditions of the oral cavity participated on the study. was obtained from each person enrolled in the study. Using FastEEM(Ercited Emission Matrix) as a optical biopsy tool, normal and tumor spectra are taken from the normal and the tumor regions. And then second optical biopsy are taken from the tumor regions in 4 patients with time delay at 7days.. Using a diagnostic algorithm, made by Gillenwater based on spectra excited at 337nm The Optical Biopsy turned out to be more suited for tumor diagnostic resulting in significant difference fluorescence spectra. The fluorescence intensity of cancerous tissue showed a higher position. The second fluorescence intensity of optical biopsy of cancerous oral tissue has more smaller than the first result. I conclude that optical biopsy, which technique don't need to remove tissue sample from body, and is a real time , and non-invasive measurement is a reliable tool to access to radiotherapy because FastEEM can do measure the variation of the tissue composition chemical, biological, and morphological after radiotherapy. Based on the fluorescence spectrum are taken from the optical biopsy in normal and tumor spectra as well as tumor spectra after 7days.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.56-63
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• 2010

Purpose : DIR image is relatively free from susceptibility artifacts therefore, DIR image can make it possible to reliably measure cortical thickness/volume. One drawback of the DIR acquisition is the long scan time to acquire the fully sampled 3D data set. To solve this problem, we applied a parallel imaging method (GRAPPA) and verify the reliability of using the volumetric study. Materials and methods : Six healthy volunteers (3 males and 3 females; age $25.33{\pm}2.25$ years) underwent MRI using the 3D DIR sequence at a 3.0T Siemens Tim Trio MRI scanner. GRAPPA simulation was performed from the fully sampled data set for reduction factor 2. Data reconstruction was performed using MATLAB R2009b. Freesurfer v.4.3.0 was used to evaluate the cortical thickness of the entire brain, and to extract white matter information from the DIR image, Analyze 9.0 was used. The global cortical thickness estimated from the reconstructed image was compared with reference image by using a T-test in SPSS. Results : Although reduced SNR and blurring are observed from the reconstructed image, in terms of segmentation the effect was not so significant. The volumetric result was validated that there were no significant differences in many cortical regions. Conclusion : This study was performed with DIR image for a volumetric MRI study. To solve the long scan time of 3D DIR imaging, we applied GRAPPA algorithm. According to the results, fast imaging can be done with reduction factor 2 with little loss of image quality at 3.0T.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.59-65
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the bioequivalence of two amlodipine maleate tablets, SKAD tablet (SK Pharma. Co., Ltd., Seoul, Korea, reference drug) and A-PINE tablet (Daewon Pharm. Co., Ltd., Seoul, Korea, test drug), according to the guidelines of Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA). Twenty-four healthy male volunteers, $22.79\;{\pm}\;1.86$ years in age and $70.08\;{\pm}\;8.68$ kg in body weight, were divided into two groups and a randomized $2\;{\time}\;2$ crossover study was employed. After a tablet containing 6.42 mg of amlodipine maleate was orally administrated, blood was taken at predetermined time intervals over a period of 144 hr and concentrations of amlodipine in plasma were monitored using LC-MS/MS. Pharmacokinetic parameters such as $AUC_t$ (the area under the plasma concentration-time curve from time zero to 144 hr), $C_{max}$ (maximum plasma drug concentration) and $T_{max}$ (time to reach $C_{max}$) were calculated and analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was utilized for the statistical analysis of the parameters using logarithmically transformed $AUC_t$ and $C_{max}$, and untransformed $T_{max}$. No significant sequence effect was found for all of the bioavailability parameters indicating that the crossover design was properly performed. The 90% confidence intervals of the $AUC_t$ ratio and the $C_{max}$ ratio for A-PINE/SKAD were $log\;0.9429{\sim}log \;1.1476$ and $log\;0.9l46{\sim}log\;1.1488$, respectively. Since these values were within the acceptable bioequivalence intervals of $log\;0.80{\sim}log\;1.25$, recommended by KFDA, it was concluded that A-PINE tablet was bioequivalent to SKAD tablet, in terms of both rate and extent of absorption.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.183-192
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• 2011

This study was done for the determination and excretion profile of superdrol and its metabolites in human urine using both liquid chromatography with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry and gas chromatography with mass spectrometry after trimethylsilylation. Superdrol and its two metabolites were detected in human urine after administration of superdrol to healthy volunteers. The intra-day recovery ranged 89.7-113.2%, accuracy ranged 91.8-113.8% and reproducibility ranged 0.2-6.8% and inter-day recovery ranged 89.3-104.1%, accuracy ranged 95.2-103.0%, reproducibility ranged 0.7-7.8%. We found that superdrol M1 was a hydration at C-3 and superdrol M2 was a hydroxylation at D-ring. Superdrol and two metabolites were excreted as their glucuronided fractions. The glucuro-/sulfa-conjugated ratio of superdrol, superdrol M1 and superdrol M2 were 0.02, 0.02, 0.01, respectively. The excretion studies showed that superdrol and two metabolites were reached 4.3 h after oral administration and superdrol and superdrol M1 were detected until 48 h in human urine.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.283-288
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• 1998

Lovastatin, one of the potent cholesterol-lowering agents, is an inactive lactone prodrug which is metabolized to its active open acid, lovastatin acid (LVA). Bioequivalence study of two lovastatin preparations, the test drug ($Mevacor^{\circledR}$: Chungwae Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.) and the reference drug ($Lovaload^{\circledR}$: Chong Kun Dang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.), was conducted according to the guidelines of Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA). Fourteen healthy male volunteers, $23.9{\pm}3.9$ years old and $67.6{\pm}8.0$ kg of body weight in average, were divided randomly into two groups and administered the drug orally at the dose of 160 mg as lovastatin in a $2{\times}2$ crossover study. Plasma concentrations of lovastatin acid were analysed by HPLC method for 12 hr after administration. The extent of bioavailability was obtained from the plasma concentration-time profiles of total lovastatin acid after alkaline hydrolysis of the plasma samples. By alkaline hydrolysis, trace amounts of unmetabolized lovastatin were converted to lovastatin acid. The $AUC_{0-12hr}$ was calculated by the linear trapezoidal rule method. The $C_{max}$ and $T_{max}$ were compiled directly from the plasma drug concentration-time data. Student's t-test indicated no significant differences between the formulations in these parameters. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that there were no differences in AUC, $C_{max}$, and $T_{max}$ between the formulations. The apparent differences between the formulations were far less than 20% (e.g., 7.07, 5.77 and 1.18% for AUC, $C_{max}$, and $T_{max}$, respectively). Minimum detectable differences(%) between the formulations at ${\alpha}=0.05$ and $1-{\beta}=0.8$ were less than 20% (e.g., 17.2, 15.1, and 15.9% for AUC, Cmax, and Tmax, respectively). The 90% confidence intervals for these parameters were also within ${\pm}20%$ (e.g.. $-5.20{\sim}19.3$, $-5.00{\sim}16.5$, and $-10.2{\sim}12.5%$ for AUC, $C_{max}$, and $T_{max}$, respectively). These results satisfied the bioequivalence criteria of KFDA guidelines, indicating that the two formulations of lovastatin were bioequivalent.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.55-59
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• 2000

Bioequivalence of two cisapride tablets, test drug ($Cisple^{\circledR}$ tablet: Hanmi Pharm Co., Ltd.) and reference drug ($Prepulsid^{\circledR}$ tablet: Janssen Pharm. Co., Ltd.), was evaluated according to the guidelines of Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA). Twenty two healthy male volunteers were divided randomly into two groups and administered the drug orally at the dose of 10 mg as cisapride in a $2{\times}2$ crossover study. There was a week washout period between administrations. Blood samples were taken at predetermined time intervals for 36 hr and the plasma concentration of cisapride was determined by a HPLC method. $AUC_{0-36hr}$ (area under the plasma concentration-time curve from time zero to 36 hr), $C_{max}$ (maximum plasma drug concentration) and $T_{max}$ (time to reach $C_{max}$) were estimated from the plasma drug concentration-time data. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed no difference in $AUC_{0-36hr},\;C_{max}\;and\;T_{max}$ between two products. The apparent differences of these parameters between two products were less than 20% (i.e., 5.38, 6.17 and 0.00% for $AUC_{0-36hr},\;C_{max}\;and\;T_{max},$ respectively). The powers $(1-\beta)$ for $AUC_{0-36hr},\;C_{max}\;and\;T_{max}$ were over 0.9. Minimal detectable differences $(\Delta)$ at ${\alpha}=0.05,\;1-{\beta}=0.8$ were less than 20% (i.e. 17.67, 14.84 and 19.72% for $AUC_{0-36hr},\;C_{max}\;and\;T_{max},$ respectively). The 90% confidence intervals $(\delta)$ for these parameters were also within ${\pm}20%$ $(i.e.\;-4.97\;{\le}{\delta}{\le}\;15.73,\;-2.53{\le}{\delta}{\le}\;14.86\;and\;-11.55{\le}{\delta}{\le}\;11.55$ for $AUC_{0-36hr},\;C_{max}\;and\;T_{max},$ respectively). These results satisfied the criteria of KFDA guidelines for bioequivalence, indicating the two tablets of cisapride were bioequivalent.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.119-126
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• 2016

In this study, we investigated the effects of mouth breathing on brain activity through electroencephalogram (EEG). EEG was performed on 12 healthy volunteers of age ranging from 21 to 27 years (male: female = 6:6, non-smoker). Brain waves on resting state (Rest_N/Rest_M) and auditory-language stimuli state (Eng_N/Eng_M) were recorded during mouth and nose breathing. Four different regions (R1~R4) were classified based on the brain functionality. And each channel (e.g., Pf1 and Pf2) and frequency (${\alpha}$, ${\beta}$, ${\gamma}$, and ${\theta}$) were analyzed using their absolute power ratios of fast Fourier transform (FFT). The results showed that there was no significant difference between Rest_N and Rest_M. Eng_N had significantly higher brain activity than Rest_N; on the other hand, there was no significant difference between Rest_M and Eng_M. These results demonstrate that mouth-breathing on resting state does not induce any significant effects on brain activity and/or functionality, even though it causes subtle temporary inconvenience. In addition to the uncomfort, the brain activity can be adversely influenced by mouth-breathing, which could lower the cognitive skills under certain circumstances.