• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.2419-2423
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• 2015

Background: There are few choices for treatment of advanced cancer patients who do not respond to or tolerate conventional anti-cancer treatments. Therefore this study aimed to deploy the benefits and clinical efficacy of continuous dendritic cell-cytokine induced killer cell infusions in such patients. Materials and Methods: A total of 381 infusions (from 67 advanced cases recruited) were included in this study. All patients underwent peripheral blood mononuclear cell apheresis for the following cellular therapy and dendritic cells-cytokine induced killer cells were expanded in vitro. Peripheral blood T lymphocyte subsets were quantified through flow cytometry to address the cellular immunity status. Clinical efficacy and physical activities were evaluated by RECIST criteria and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group scores respectively. Logistic regression model was used to estimate the association between cellular infusions and clinical benefits. Results: An average of $5.7{\pm}2.94{\times}10^9$ induced cells were infused each time and patients were exposed to 6 infusions. Cellular immunity was improved in that cytotoxic $CD8^+CD28^+$ T lymphocytes were increased by 74% and suppressive $CD8^+CD28^-$ T lymphocytes were elevated by 16% (p<0.05). Continuous infusion of dendritic cells-cytokine induced killer cells was associated with improvement of both patient status and cellular immunity. A median of six infusions were capable of reducing risk of progression by 70% (95%CI 0.10-0.91). Every elevation of one ECOG score corresponded to a 3.90-fold higher progression risk (p<0.05) and 1% increase of $CD8^+CD28^-$ T cell proportion reflecting a 5% higher risk of progression (p<0.05). Conclusions: In advanced cancer patients, continuous dendritic cell-cytokine induced killer cell infusions are capable of recovering cellular immunity, improving patient status and quality of life in those who are unresponsive to conventional cancer treatment.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.63-71
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• 2004

Purpose: This study was to identify the influencing factors of the compliance level to a therapeutic regimen after a bone mineral densitometry test. Method: The sample for the study was 95 people who took the bone mineral densitometry test from March, 2002 to July, 2002. Data was collected by mail using aself reporting questionnaire on the selected variables such as the compliance level, self efficacy, health locus of control, susceptibility, severity, usefulness, barrier, and self esteem. Results: The average compliance level was 63.93. Through multiple regression, three independent variables including chance health locus of control on personality, the result of bone mineral density and self-efficacy were entered in the model as the significant determinants of the compliance level after a bone mineral densitometry test. The coefficients of determination of each variable were 10.9%, 8.3% and 8.1% respectively. Conclusion: The identification of the determinants of the compliance level to the therapeutic regimen after bone mineral densitometry is expected to contribute to the development of an intervention program to improve the compliance level to the therapeutic regimen in osteoporosis patients.

• Journal of muscle and joint health
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.199-209
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• 2020

Purpose: This study examined the prevalence of depressive symptoms and psycho-behavioral factors affecting depressive symptoms in patients with osteoarthritis. Methods: This cross-sectional study enrolled a convenience sample of 157 patients with osteoarthritis in a university hospital between March and December 2018. Depressive symptoms, osteoarthritis function, therapeutic self-efficacy, and health-related quality of life (QoL) were measured using structured questionnaires. Logistic regression analysis was used to investigate factors affecting depressive symptoms. Results: The mean age of participants was 73.3 years with 76.4% of them being women. The prevalence of depressive symptoms was 38.5%. Patients with depressive symptoms were more likely to be currently smoking and had an occupation and worse flexibility function associated with osteoarthritis. Whereas they were less likely to engage in regular physical activity and had a low level of therapeutic self-efficacy and perceived health-related QoL. Conclusion: Therapeutic self-efficacy to regular physical activity, including flexibility function may be primary factors influencing depressive symptoms in patients with osteoarthritis. With the management of osteoarthritis, psycho-behavioral factors should be considered in developing interventions to prevent depressive symptoms in patients with osteoarthritis.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.121-136
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• 2022

Purpose : Marine therapy is an activity that promotes public health such as constitution improvement, immunity improvement, and anti-aging by utilizing marine therapeutic resources such as seawater, mud, seaweed, salt and sea climate. In Europe developed countries, the marine therapy industry has been developing for centuries, with France, Germany, and Israel leading the way. Currently, it has achieved great industrial achievements and is of great help in improving the human health. The purpose of this study is to investigate how marine therapeutic resources benefit to human health, as well as how to study and utilize their efficacy. We analyzed previous research articles related to the effects of marine therapeutic resources. Methods : The study included a total of 830 published literatures in the last 20 years from the Republic of Korea and other contries. PubMed and Google Scholar were utilized to collect the foreign source while the local scientific publications were accessed through the Korean Education and research Information Service (KERIS) and Korean studies Information Service System (KISS). The keywords used to search foreign literature were "marine therapy", "Thalassotherapy", "seawater", "deep seawater", "saline groundwater", "sand therapy", "mud therapy", "hydrotherapy", "seaweed", "Sun light", "sea salt", "marine animal", and "marine microorganisms" were combined, and for the domestic literature, the keywords were "marine therapy", "marine therapeutic resources", "seawater", and "sand". Results : A total of 830 research papers were found as a result of searching for domestic and international papers related to marine therapeutic resources. The collected documents were classified into 175 seawater resources, 259 marine mineral resources, 41 marine environment, and 355 marine organisms. The efficacy of each marine therapeutic resources was analyzed. By resources type, there were about 213 papers on the efficacy of seaweed, followed by about 175 papers on seawater, 142 on microorganisms, 124 on mud/peat, and sand, salt, minerals and others are appeared in order (Table 1). Conclusion : Korea has the highest marine biodiversity index, excellent tidal flats, four distinct seasons, and various sea environments of the East sea, Yellow sea, South sea and Jeju sea. For this reason, Korea has a much more diverse marine therapeutic resources than other advanced countries in the marine therapy industry. prebiously, we thought that the sea was only valuable as a shipping port and fishery industry. But now, it been shown that the ocean can become a new industrial field which can contribute to human health and well-being by providing healing and therapy to people through the gift of marine resources.

• Biomaterials Research
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.311-318
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• 2018

Background: Tissue regeneration includes delivering specific types of cells or cell products to injured tissues or organs for restoration of tissue and organ function. Stem cell therapy has drawn considerable attention since transplantation of stem cells can overcome the limitations of autologous transplantation of patient's tissues; however, it is not perfect for treating diseases. To overcome the hurdles associated with stem cell therapy, tissue engineering techniques have been developed. Development of stem cell technology in combination with tissue engineering has opened new ways of producing engineered tissue substitutes. Several studies have shown that this combination of tissue engineering and stem cell technologies enhances cell viability, differentiation, and therapeutic efficacy of transplanted stem cells. Main body: Stem cells that can be used for tissue regeneration include mesenchymal stem cells, embryonic stem cells, and induced pluripotent stem cells. Transplantation of stem cells alone into injured tissues exhibited low therapeutic efficacy due to poor viability and diminished regenerative activity of transplanted cells. In this review, we will discuss the progress of biomedical engineering, including scaffolds, biomaterials, and tissue engineering techniques to overcome the low therapeutic efficacy of stem cells and to treat human diseases. Conclusion: The combination of stem cell and tissue engineering techniques overcomes the limitations of stem cells in therapy of human diseases, and presents a new path toward regeneration of injured tissues.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.1197-1205
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• 2014

Typical clinical dose development studies consist of the comparison of several doses of a drug with a placebo. The primary interest is to find therapeutic window that satisfying both efficacy and safety. In this paper, we propose nonparametric method for identifying effective and safe doses in linear placement using score function. The Monte Carlo simulation is adapted to estimate the power and the family-wise error rate(FWE) of proposed procedure are compared with previous methods.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.66-73
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• 2006

Monoclonal antibodies are designed to bind specifically to certain antigen, give therapeutic effect to the target and to be produced in large scale with homogeneity. The monoclonal antibodies conjugated with radionuclide can deliver therapeutic irradiation to the target, and showed successful results in certain malignancies, which is known as radioimmunotherapy. The target-to-background ratio depends on the antigen expression in the target and normal tissues, which is related to the therapeutic efficacy and toxicity in radioimmunotherapy. For the solid tumor beta-ray energy should be high, but lower beta energy is better for the hematological malignancies. I-l31 is widely used in thyroid cancer with low cost and high availability. Labeling monoclonal antibody with I-131 is relatively simple and reproducible. Some preclinical data for the I-131 labeled monoclonal antibodies including acute toxicity and efficacy are available from already published literatures in KIRAMS, physician sponsored clinical trial protocols using Rituximab, KFDA approved anti-CD20 chimeric monoclonal antibody and I-131 were approved by KFDA and currently are ongoing.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.76 no.3
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• pp.105-113
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• 2014

From January 2012 up until March 2013, many articles with huge clinical importance in asthma were published based on large numbered clinical trials or meta-analysis. The main subjects of these studies were the new therapeutic plan based on the asthma phenotype or efficacy along with the safety issues regarding the current treatment guidelines. For efficacy and safety issues, inhaled corticosteroid tapering strategy or continued long-acting beta agonists use was the major concern. As new therapeutic trials, monoclonal antibodies or macrolide antibiotics based on inflammatory phenotypes have been under investigation, with promising preliminary results. There were other issues on the disease susceptibility or genetic background of asthma, particularly for the "severe asthma" phenotype. In the era of genome and pharmacogenetics, there have been extensive studies to identify susceptible candidate genes based on the results of genome wide association studies (GWAS). However, for severe asthma, which is where most of the mortality or medical costs develop, it is very unclear. Moreover, there have been some efforts to find important genetic information in order to predict the possible disease progression, but with few significant results up until now. In conclusion, there are new on-going aspects in the phenotypic classification of asthma and therapeutic strategy according to the phenotypic variations. With more pharmacogenomic information and clear identification of the "severe asthma" group even before disease progression from GWAS data, more adequate and individualized therapeutic strategy could be realized in the future.

• Natural Product Sciences
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.193-200
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• 2021

Sophora flavescens Ait. (Fabaceae) is a medicinal plant widely founded in Northeast Asia, and its dried root (Kushen) has been used as a traditional Chinese herbal medicine. The therapeutic effects of Kushen in micturition disorder was not investigated comprehensively yet. In the present study, we examined and compared the efficacy of three batches of Kushen extract using different ethanol content through an in vitro cell-based assay. Among them, we chose the batch with the highest efficacy and augmented the volume of extract for industrial purpose. The bulk extract was examined in its efficacy in the in vitro cell-based assay, and the therapeutic effects through an in vivo behavioral assay of OAB rats. The main components of the extracts were analyzed by liquid chromatography. Cytotoxicity of the extracts was investigated by MTT assay. The overall efficacy of the extract was as much as, or more than, kurarinone, a potent BK_Ca channel activator. Thus, the extract was a potent relaxant of urinary smooth muscle by upregulating the activity of BK_Ca channel. The Kushen extract could be explored as an alternative medicine against overactive bladder patients indicating severe dysfunction of BK_Ca channel.

• Journal of Pharmacopuncture
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2021

Flavonoids consist a wide range of naturally occurring compounds which are exclusively found in different fruits and vegetables. These medicinal herbs have a number of favourable biological and therapeutic activities such as antioxidant, neuroprotective, renoprotective, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic and anti-tumor. Troxerutin, also known as vitamin P4, is a naturally occurring flavonoid which is isolated from tea, coffee and cereal grains as well as vegetables. It has a variety of valuable pharmacological and therapeutic activities including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic and anti-tumor. These pharmacological impacts have been demonstrated in in vitro and in vivo studies. Also, clinical trials have revealed the efficacy of troxerutin for management of phlebocholosis and hemorrhoidal diseases. In the present review, we focus on the therapeutic effects and biological activities of troxerutin as well as its molecular signaling pathways.