• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.110-117
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• 2017

The anti-inflammatory effect of Sargassum patens C. Agardh ethanol extract (SPEE) was examined based on the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammatory response in this study. SPEE treatment was not cytotoxic to macrophages compared to the control. The production of NO was suppressed by SPEE by approximately 28% at $100{\mu}g/ml$, and levels of interleukin-6, tumor necrosis $factor-{\alpha}$, and $interleukin-1{\beta}$ decreased in a dose-dependent manner. In addition, the expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase, cyclooxygenase-2, and nuclear $factor-{\kappa}B$ was suppressed by SPEE treatment. In vivo, croton oil-induced mouse ear edema was attenuated by SPEE and the infiltration of mast cells into the tissue decreased. Based on these results, SPEE inhibits the release of LPS-induced pro-inflammatory cytokines and mediators, suggesting that SPEE is a potential agent for anti-inflammatory therapies.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.157-166
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• 2015

Purpose: The effects of water extract and distillate from the mixture of black goat meat and medicinal herb on MG-63 osteoblast proliferation and mouse bone marrow derived osteoclast formation were investigated. Methods: Proximate composition, volatile basic nitrogen (VBN), mineral content, free amino acid composition and free fatty acid composition in black goat meat were determined. Water extract and distillate were prepared with three groups; goat meat only (BG-E, BG-D), six herbs added group (BG-E6, BG-D6), and eight herbs added group (BG-E8, BG-D8). Osteoblast proliferation, mineralization and calcium uptake activity of MG-63 cells were measured and tartrate resistant acid phosphatase activity of osteoclasts was analyzed. Results: Black goat meat had remarkably low fat and high level of calcium. Glutamic acid was the most abundant amino acid. Herbs added extract groups (BG-E6 and BG-E8) showed increased MG-63 cell proliferation in a concentration dependent manner, while all the distillates did not show the effect. All extracts and distillates showed significantly increased osteoblast mineralization depending on the concentration. In particular, herb added extract, BG-E6, increased 170.3% of control and the distillate of BG-D and BG-D6 increased up to 168.5% and 159.8%, respectively. Calcium uptake activities of all water extracts showed remarkable increase of BG-E6 and BG-E8 up to 615.5% and 628.1% of control, respectively. Ditillates had no effect except BG-D6. All water extracts significantly reduced the activity of tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP) in osteoclasts derived from mouse bone marrow. Conclusion: Combination of black goat meat and medicinal herb increased the MG-63 cell proliferation and effectively inhibited osteoclast differentiation in both water extracts and distillate of them, which implies that they could be used as potent functional food materials for bone health.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.241-250
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• 2002

Background : Coal-worker's pneumoconiosis(CWP) is characterized by a chronic inflammatory lung reaction associated with macrophage accumulation in the alveolar spaces. CWP is usually divided into two stage : simple pneumoconiosis(SP) where there are a limited number of fibrotic lesions remain limited, with radiological opacities smaller than 1cm and progressive massive fibrosis(PMF), which is characterized by the development of a perifocal extensive fibrotic response of the lung and severe alterations in pulmonary function. In this study, the lymphocyte compartment and cytokine were evaluated by measuring the serum levels in the control, SP and PMF groups. Materials and Methods : The coal workers selected for this study were employees(patients?) of the Tae-Baek and Dong-Hae hospital. All were men, 45-76 years old and the mean duration of their exposure to coal dust was 23.2 years in the lymphocyte compartment and 24.3 years in the cytokine checked group. According to X-ray examination results, the patients were classified into either one of the SP, PMF categories. The normal controls examined were 26-70 years old men. The serum cytokine levels were estimated by using an end point enzyme immunoassay technique. Results : T lymphocyte, helper and suppressor T cells were highly related to pneumoconiosis in this study. A statistically significant decrease in the number of suppressor T lymphocytes was observed in the simple pneumoconiosis patients and at the same time, there was an increase in the lymphocyte index. Howevere, there was no statistically difference in the serum cytokines levels among the SP, PMF and control groups. Conclusion : T lymphocyte, helper T, and suppressor T cells may be highly related to the development of CWP compared to the control group particularly in the early stage of pneumoconiosis. The changes observed in the immunological system in patients with pneumoconiosis may lie at the bottom of the pathogenesis of fibrosis. Further study is needed to evaluate the lymphocyte compartment as a marker for pneumoconiosis development in the early stage.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.45 no.7
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• pp.929-937
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of Acanthopanax senticosus extract (ASE) (ethanol : DW=1:1, v/v) on inhibition of type 2 diabetes using an OLETF rat model via regulation of HbA1c and AGEs levels. Supplementation with ASE 0.1% and 0.5% effectively lowered levels of glucose, insulin, oral glucose tolerance test, and Homa-insulin resistance, suggesting reduced insulin resistance. Blood levels of HbA1c and AGEs were significantly reduced in a dose-dependent manner. As oxidative stress plays a key role in accelerating production of HbA1c and AGEs, which worsen symptoms of type 2 diabetes, levels of malonaldehyde and pro-inflammatory cytokines were measured. Lipid peroxidation in both blood and liver tissues was significantly reduced, and induction of pro-inflammatory cytokines interleukin-${\beta}$ and tumor necrosis factor-${\alpha}$, which elevate production of HbA1c and AGEs, was inhibited (P<0.05). To evaluate the possible cellular events after AGEs receptor activation, genetic expression of protein kinase C (PKC)-${\delta}$ and transforming growth factor (TGF)-${\beta}$ was measured by real-time polymerase chain reaction. Supplementation with both ASE 0.1% and 0.5% significantly inhibited mRNA expression of PKC-${\delta}$ and TGF-${\beta}$, indicating that ASE may have beneficial effects on preventing insulin-resistant cells or tissues from progressing to diabetic complications. Taken together, ASE has potential to improve type 2 diabetes by inhibiting insulin resistance and protein glycosylation, including production of HbA1c and AGEs. Anti-oxidative activities of ASE are a main requisite for reducing production of HbA1c and AGEs and are also related to regulation of the PKC signaling pathway, resulting in suppression of TGF-${\beta}$, which increases synthesis of collagen, prostaglandin, and disease-related proteins.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.45 no.9
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• pp.1249-1256
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• 2016

Black ginseng (BG) obtained by a 9-fold steaming process of Panax ginseng has been reported to have anti-oxidative, anti-obesity, and anti-diabetes effects. The current study evaluated the protective effect of BG by steaming time in an HCl/ethanol-induced acute gastritis model. BG was divided into four samples according to steaming-drying processing (Gin1, Gin3, Gin6, and BG). High performance liquid chromatography analysis, free radical scavenging activity, and total phenol and flavonoid contents were examined in ginseng and four BG samples. Compared with ginseng, BG showed a stronger radical scavenging effect and higher contents of total phenol and flavonoids. To evaluate the anti-gastritic effect of BG, mice were distributed into five groups: normal mice (N), acute gastritic mice with distilled water (CON), acute gastritic mice with 100 mg/kg of ginseng (Gin0), acute gastritic mice with 100 mg/kg of BG (BG), and acute gastritic mice with 10 mg/kg of sucralfate (SC). After 1 hour of pre-treatment with water, extracts (Gin0 and BG), or drug (SC), experimental groups except for N were orally administered 0.5 mL of 150 mM HCl/60% ethanol (v/v) mixture. Blood was collected 1 hour later from the heart, and gastric tissue was harvested. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels were measured in serum, and related protein expression was examined by Western blot assay. In HCl/ethanol-induced acute gastritic mice, treatment with ginseng or BG improved mucosal damage in the histological evaluation. The serum ROS level significantly decreased in the BG-treated group compared with the CON group. Furthermore, expression of inflammatory cytokines significantly decreased in the BG-treated group compared with the CON group. Based on these results, antioxidant and anti-gastritic activities of ginseng were enhanced by streaming-drying processing, in part due to an increase in biological active compounds.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.221-228
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• 2014

Purpose: Citron seed oil (CSO) has been reported to have high antioxidant activity. However, the composition and other biologically activities of CSO have not been reported. In this study, we confirmed the fatty acid composition of CSO, which may be beneficial to vascular disease and obesity. Methods: We investigated the oil composition of CSO using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis, and cytotoxicity was confirmed by Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) assay. Nitric oxide (NO) production in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) was measured using Griess reagent, and lipid accumulation and leptin secretion in 3T3-L1 cells were measured by Oil-Red O staining and commercial ELISA kit, respectively. Results: GC-MS analysis indicated that CSO contains several components, including linoleic acid, oleic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid, linolenic acid, palmitoleic acid, and arachidic acid. In physiological activity analysis, CSO did not induce cytotoxic effects in HUVECs and 3T3-L1 cells. Further, CSO significantly induced nitric oxide and leptin secretion as well as inhibited lipid accumulation. Conclusion: CSO increased NO release, inhibited lipid accumulation, and induced leptin secretion, suggesting it may be useful for the management of vessels and weight gain. Although further studies are required to investigate the safety and mechanism of action of CSO, our results show that the composition and physiological activity of CSO are sufficient for its use as functional edible oil.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.135-149
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• 2000

Most of prior works on testing parallel programs have concentrated on how to guarantee the reproducibility by employing event traces exercised during executions of a program. Consequently, little work has been done to generate test cases, especially, from specifications produced from software development process. In this research work, we devise the techniques for deriving test cases automatically from the specifications written in Message Sequence Charts(MSCs) which are widely used in telecommunication areas and develop the testing environment for performing module testing of parallel programs with derived test cases. For deriving test cases from MSCs, we have to uncover the causality relations among events embedded implicitly in MSCs. For this, we devise the methods for adapting vector time stamping to MSCs, Then, valid event sequences, satisfying the causality relations, are generated and these are used as test cases. The generated test cases, written in TTCN, are translated into CHILL source codes, which interact with a target module to be tested and test the validity of behaviors of the module. Since the testing method developed in this research work extracts test cases from the MSC specifications produced front telecommunications software development process, it is not necessary to describe auxiliary specifications for testing. In audition adapting vector time stamping generates automatically the event sequences, the generated event sequences that are ones for whole system can be used for individual testing purpose.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.664-672
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• 2015

In order to develop new immuno-stimulating ingredients from mature leaves of green tea, crude polysaccharides were isolated from pectinase digests of tea leaves (green tea enzyme digestion, GTE-0), after which their immuno-stimulating activities and chemical properties were examined. GTE-0 mainly contained neutral sugars (54.9%) such as glucose (14.2%), arabinose (12.2%), rhamnose (11.1%), and galacturonic acid (45.1%), which are characteristic of pectic polysaccharides. The anti-complementary activity of GTE-0 was similar to that of polysaccharide K (used as positive control). Number of morphologically activated macrophages was significantly increased in the GTE-0-treated group. GTE-0 significantly augmented $H_2O_2$ and reactive oxygen species production by murine peritoneal macrophage cells in a dose-dependent manner, whereas production of nitric oxide showed the highest activity at a dose of $100{\mu}g/mL$ among all tested concentrations. Murine peritoneal macrophages stimulated with GTE-0 showed enhanced production of various cytokines such as interleukin (IL)-6, IL-12, and tumor necrosis factors-${\alpha}$ in a dose-dependent manner. Further, GTE-0 induced higher phagocytic activity in a dose-dependent manner. In ex vivo assay for cytolytic activity of murine peritoneal macrophages, GTE-0-treated group showed significantly higher activity compared to the untreated group at an effector-to-target cell ratio of 20. The above results lead us to conclude that polysaccharides from leaves of green tea have a potent immuno-stimulating effect on murine peritoneal macrophage cells.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.45-55
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• 2015

This study was carried out to demonstrate the anti-inflammatory effect of tuna oil (TO) using LPS-induced inflammation responses and mouse models. First, nitric oxide (NO) and pro-inflammatory cytokines levels were suppressed up to 50% with increasing concentrations of TO without causing any cytotoxicity. Also, the expression of a variety of proteins, such as inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB), was suppressed in a dosedependent manner by treatment with TO. Furthermore, TO also inhibited the phosphorylation of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs), including c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK), and p38 protein kinase (p38). Moreover, in in vivo testing the formation of ear edema was reduced at the highest dose tested compared to that in the control, and a reduction of ear thickness and the number of mast cells was observed in histological analysis. In acute toxicity test, no mortalities occurred in mice administrated 5,000 mg/kg body weight of TO over a two-week observation period. Our results suggest that TO has a considerable anti-inflammatory property through the suppression of inflammatory mediator productions and that it could prove to be useful as a potential anti-inflammatory therapeutic material.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.205-215
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• 2013

Most terminally ill cancer patients experience various physical and psychological symptoms during their illness. In addition to pain, they commonly suffer from fatigue, anorexia-cachexia syndrome, nausea, vomiting and dyspnea. In this paper, I reviewed some of the common non-pain symptoms in terminally ill cancer patients, based on the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines to better understand and treat cancer patients. Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is a common symptom in terminally ill cancer patients. There are reversible causes of fatigue, which include anemia, sleep disturbance, malnutrition, pain, depression and anxiety, medical comorbidities, hyperthyroidism and hypogonadism. Energy conservation and education are recommended as central management for CRF. Corticosteroid and psychostimulants can be used as well. The anorexia and cachexia syndrome has reversible causes and should be managed. It includes stomatitis, constipation and uncontrolled severe symptoms such as pain or dyspnea, delirium, nausea/vomiting, depression and gastroparesis. To manage the syndrome, it is important to provide emotional support and inform the patient and family of the natural history of the disease. Megesteol acetate, dronabinol and corticosteroid can be helpful. Nausea and vomiting will occur by potentially reversible causes including drug consumption, uremia, infection, anxiety, constipation, gastric irritation and proximal gastrointestinal obstruction. Metoclopramide, haloperidol, olanzapine and ondansetron can be used to manage nausea and vomiting. Dyspnea is common even in terminally ill cancer patients without lung disease. Opioids are effective for symptomatic management of dyspnea. To improve the quality of life for terminally ill cancer patients, we should try to ameliorate these symptoms by paying more attention to patients and understanding of management principles.