• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.4435-4438
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• 2015

p21 is a cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor, which can arrest cell proliferation and serve as a tumor suppressor. Though many studies were published to assess the relationship between p21 rs1059234 polymorphism and various cancer risks, there was no definite conclusion on this association. To derive a more precise quantitative assessment of the relationship, a large scale meta-analysis of 5,963 cases and 8,405 controls from 16 eligible published case-control studies was performed. Our analysis suggested that rs1059234 was not associated with the integral cancer risk for both dominant model [(T/T+C/T) vs C/C, OR=1.00, 95% CI: 0.84-1.18] and recessive model [T/T vs (C/C+C/T), OR=1.03, 95% CI: 0.93-1.15)]. However, further stratified analysis showed rs1059234 was greatly associated with the risk of squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck (SCCHN). Thus, larger scale primary studies are still required to further evaluate the interaction of p21 rs1059234 polymorphism and cancer risk in specific cancer subtypes.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.18
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• pp.8595-8598
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• 2016

Background: Decision making modalities for screening for many cancer conditions and different stages have become increasingly complex. Computer-based risk assessment systems facilitate scheduling and decision making and support the delivery of cancer screening services. The aim of this article was to survey electronic risk assessment system as an appropriate tool for the prevention of cancer. Materials and Methods: A qualitative design was used involving 21 face-to-face interviews. Interviewing involved asking questions and getting answers from exclusive managers of cancer screening. Of the participants 6 were female and 15 were male, and ages ranged from 32 to 78 years. The study was based on a grounded theory approach and the tool was a semi-structured interview. Results: Researchers studied 5 dimensions, comprising electronic guideline standards of colorectal cancer screening, work flow of clinical and genetic activities, pathways of colorectal cancer screening and functionality of computer based guidelines and barriers. Electronic guideline standards of colorectal cancer screening were described in the s3 categories of content standard, telecommunications and technical standards and nomenclature and classification standards. According to the participations' views, workflow and genetic pathways of colorectal cancer screening were identified. Conclusions: The study demonstrated an effective role of computer-guided consultation for screening management. Electronic based systems facilitate real-time decision making during a clinical interaction. Electronic pathways have been applied for clinical and genetic decision support, workflow management, update recommendation and resource estimates. A suitable technical and clinical infrastructure is an integral part of clinical practice guidline of screening. As a conclusion, it is recommended to consider the necessity of architecture assessment and also integration standards.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.385-392
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• 2013

Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent, primarily due to limited sun exposure, which may be observed in urban areas, or as a result of modern lifestyles. Common myths about vitamin D persist, including that it is mostly obtained from the diet and is only essential for bone and mineral homeostasis. Nonetheless, advances in biomedical science suggest that vitamin D is a hormone that is integral to numerous physiologic functions in most cells and tissues. Therefore, abnormal vitamin D levels may contribute to health disturbances. A number of recent reports on potential associations between vitamin D deficiency and cardiovascular disease have highlighted its role in this system. A focus over the previous decade has been to better understand the mechanisms behind vitamin D regulation and the pathophysiology associated with suboptimal vitamin D levels. Vitamin D deficiency is highly associated with the incidence of cardiovascular diseases, even when considering other well-known risk factors. In this process, the renin-angiotensin system is disrupted, and hypertension and endothelial dysfunction contribute to the risk of cardiovascular disease. Likewise, clinical outcomes upon the normalization of vitamin D levels have been investigated in different patient populations. It makes sense that vitamin D supplementation to improve vitamin D status among vitamin D-deficient individuals could be useful without requiring a sudden lifestyle change. This manuscript provides a brief overview of vitamin D metabolism and the vitamin D receptor. It also summarizes the current clinical research relating to vitamin D supplementation and its effects on hypertension and endothelial dysfunction in cardiovascular medicine.

• East Asian Journal of Business Economics (EAJBE)
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.8-20
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• 2016

Banks are the engines that drive the operations in financial sector, money markets and growth of economy. With growing banking industry in India, frauds in Banks are increasing and fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated and ingenious. Shockingly, banking industry in India dubs rising fraud as "an inevitable cost of doing business." As part of study, a questionnaire-based survey was conducted in 2012-13 among 345 Bank employees "to know their perception towards bank frauds and evaluate factors that influence the degree of their compliance level." The study reveals, "there are poor employment practices and lack of effective employee training; usually over-burdened staff, weak internal control systems, and low compliance levels on the part of Bank Managers, Offices and Clerks. Although banks cannot be 100% secure against unknown threats, a certain level of preparedness can go a long way in countering fraud risk. Internal audit professionals should play an integral role in organization's fraud-fighting efforts. Some other promising steps are: educate customers about fraud prevention, make application of laws more stringent, leverage the power of data analysis technologies, follow fraud mitigation best practices, and employ multipoint scrutiny.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.193-205
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• 2022

The face stability of shield tunnelling is the most important control index for safety risk management. Based on the reliability of the transparent clay (TC) model test, a series of TC model tests under different buried depth were conducted to investigate the progressive failure mechanism of tunnel face. The support pressure was divided into the rapid descent stage, the slow descent stage and the basically stable stage with company of the local failure and integral failure in the internal of the soil during the failure process. The relationship between the support pressure and the soil movement characteristics of each failure stage was defined. The failure occurred from the soil in front of the tunnel face and propagated as the slip zone and the loose zone. The fitted formulas were proposed for the calculation of the failure process. The failure mode in clay was specified as the basin shape with an inverted trapezoid shape for shallow buried and appeared as the basin shape with a teardrop-like shape in deep case. The implications of these findings could help in the safety risk management of the underground construction.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.84-92
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• 2001

In today's world, rise in the establishment of social infrastructure resulting from population saturation in large cities has led to more extensive and frequent use of chemical materials on facilities. A result, unexpected and serious accidents, hazards, contingencies and disasters are more prevalent than ever. Such phenomenon calls for more devoted and concerted efforts towards finding ways to reduce the safety hazards that are seen to take place more often than before with the increase in the number of facilities that are prone to bring disaster and hazard coupled with the conventional safety problems that continue to exist even today. In developed countries, such challenge is addressed by various appropriate countermeasures drawn up by local professional committees on industrial facilities, whose members conduct offsite and onsite evaluation un the potential industrial disasters and its seriousness and provide their advice thereof. Against this backdrop, this study aims at identifying a comprehensive safety allowance level (safety acceptable level) when imposing limitation on the development of conventional or new facilities, for the fur pose of establishing a safety allowance level of disastrous and dangerous facilities in Korea. This is done by assessing and applying the level of danger each individual is exposed to in a randomly selected region (disastrous and dangerous areas in Seoul) based on probability of quantitative hazards, as well as simulation and calculation methods which include: i) social disaster evaluation method applying Quantified Risk Assessment of Health & Safety Executive of UK and Matrix of Risk of Evaluated Sources of Hazard; ii) Fault Tree or Event Tree Analysis and etc.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.889-896
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• 2015

Matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP2) is an endopeptidase, mainly responsible for degradation of extracellular matrix components, which plays an important role in cancer disease. A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) at -1306 disrupts a Sp1-type promoter site. The results from the published studies on the association between MMP2 -1306 C>T polymorphism and cancer risk are contradictory and inconclusive. In the present study, a meta-analysis was therefore performed to evaluate the strength of any association between the MMP2 -1306 C>T polymorphism and risk of cancer. We searched all eligible studies published on association between MMP2 -1306 C>T polymorphism and cancer risk in PubMed (Medline), EMBASE and Google Scholar online web databases until December 2013. Genotype distribution data were collected to calculate the pooled odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CIs) to examine the strength of the association. A total of 8,590 cancer cases and 9,601 controls were included from twenty nine eligible case control studies. Overall pooled analysis suggested significantly reduced risk associated with heterozygous genotype (CT vs CC: OR=0.758, 95%CI=0.637 to 0.902, p=0.002) and dominant model (TT+CT vs CC: OR=0.816, 95%CI=0.678 to 0.982, p=0.032) genetic models. However, allelic (T vs C: OR=0.882, 95%CI=0.738 to 1.055, p=0.169), homozygous (TT vs CC: OR=1.185, 95%CI=0.825 to 1.700, p=0.358) and recessive (TT vs CC+CT: OR=1.268, 95%CI=0.897 to 1.793, p=0.179) models did not show any risk. No evidence of publication bias was detected during the analysis. The results of present meta-analysis suggest that the MMP2 -1306 C>T polymorphism is significantly associated with reduced risk of cancer. However, further studies with consideration of different populations will be required to evaluate this relationship in more detail.

• Journal of Genetic Medicine
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.89-93
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• 2008

"Personalized medicine," the goal of which is to provide better clinical care by applying patient's own genomic information to their health care is a global challenge for the $21^{st}$ century "genomic era." This is especially true in Korea, where provisions for clinical genetic services are inadequate for the existing demand, let alone future demands. Genomics-based knowledge and tools make it possible to approach each patient as a unique biological individual, which has led to a paradigm-shift in medical practice, giving it more of a predictive focus as compared with current treatment oriented approach. With recent advancements in genomics, many genetic tests, such as susceptibility genetic tests, have been developed for both rare single gene diseases and more common multifactorial diseases. Indeed, genetic tests for presymtomatic individuals and genetic tests for drug response have become widely available, and personalized medicine will face the challenge of assisting patients who use such tests to make appropriate and wise use of genetic risk assessment. A major challenge of genomic medicine lies in understanding and communicating disease risk in order to facilitate and support patients and their families in making informed decisions. Establishment of a health care system with provisions for genetic counseling as an integral part of health care service, in addition to genomic literacy of health care providers, is vital to meet this growing challenge. Realization of the promise of personalized medicine in the era of genomics for improvement of health care is dependent on further development of next generation sequencing technology and affordable sequencing test costs. Also necessary will be policy development concerning the ethical, legal and social issues of genomic medicine and an educated and ready medical community with clinical practice guidelines for genetic counseling and genetic testing.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.14
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• pp.5647-5654
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• 2015

Gall bladder cancer (GBC) is a gastro-intestinal cancer with high prevalence among north Indian women. Platelet derived growth factor-B (PDGFB) and human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2) may play roles in the etiology of GBC through the inflammation-hyperplasia-dysplasia-carcinoma pathway. To study the association of PDGFB and HER2 polymorphisms with risk of GBC, 200 cases and 300 controls were considered. PDGFB +286A>G and +1135A>C polymorphisms were investigated with an amplification refractory mutation system and the HER2 $Ile^{655}Val$ polymorphism by restriction fragment length polymorphism. Significant risk associations for PDGFB +286 GG (OR=5.25) and PDGFB +1135 CC (OR=3.19) genotypes were observed for GBC. Gender wise stratification revealed susceptibility for recessive models of PDGFB +1135A>C (OR=3.00) and HER2 $Ile^{655}Val$ (OR=2.52) polymorphisms among female GBC cases. GBC cases with gall stones were predisposed to homozygous +286 GG and +1135 CC genotypes. Significant risk associations were found for ACIle (OR=1.48), GAVal (OR=1.70), GAIle (OR=2.00) haplotypes with GBC cases and GCIle haplotype with female GBC cases (OR=10.37, P=<0.0001). Pair-wise linkage disequilibrium revealed negative associations among variant alleles. On multi-dimensional reduction analysis, a three factor model revealed significant gene-gene interaction for PDGFB +286A>G, PDGFB +1135A>C and HER2 Ile165Val SNPs with GBC. Protein-protein interaction showed significant association of PDGFB and HER2 with the epidermal growth factor receptor signaling pathway.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.89-94
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• 2013

Diatoms have become an integral part of the UK's freshwater monitoring strategy over the past two decades, mostly in response to increasingly stringent European Union (EU) legislation. The use of diatoms is based on strong correlations between diatom assemblages and environmental variables, and from knowledge of the "expected" (= "reference") state of each river. The nationwide overview of the ecological health of rivers this gives allows those stretches of rivers which fail to meet EU criteria to be identified. This, in turn, allows appropriate remediation measures to be planned. Because diatom assemblages vary in space and time, even within a single water body, effective use of diatoms requires a consistent approach in order to minimise uncertainty. This includes the use of methods which comply with European Standards, a training and accreditation scheme for analysts, and a suite of quality assurance methods. Those aspects of uncertainty that cannot be readily controlled have been quantified and all estimates of ecological status are accompanied by the appropriate "confidence of class" and "risk of misclassification". This, in turn, helps planners prioritise those locations which are most likely to benefit from remediation.