• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.162-167
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• 2012

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the major cause of lower respiratory tract infection in infants. Life-threatening RSV infection is often reported in young children and immunocompromised hosts. Since there is no report on ribavirin therapy for RSV pneumonia in pediatric cancer patients in Korea, we report one case of RSV pneumonia that developed in an infant with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Despite administration of oral ribavirin and intravenous immunoglobulin, the patient's respiratory distress worsened and admission to an intensive care unit was necessary. Chest x-ray showed multifocal consolidation, pneumothorax, and pneumomediastinum. Treatment with aerosolized ribavirin led to significant clinical improvement. The role of aerosolized ribavirin is still controversial, but it might have a therapeutic potential for severe RSV pneumonia in children with leukemia.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.249-262
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• 2021

The most effective way to control newly emerging infectious disease, such as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, is to strengthen preventative or therapeutic public health strategies before the infection spreads worldwide. However, global health systems remain at the early stages in anticipating effective therapeutics or vaccines to combat the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. While maintaining social distance is the most crucial metric to avoid spreading the virus, symptomatic therapy given to patients on the clinical manifestations helps save lives. The molecular properties of SARS-CoV-2 infection have been quickly elucidated, paving the way to therapeutics, vaccine development, and other medical interventions. Despite this progress, the detailed biomolecular mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 infection remains elusive. Given virus invasion of cells is a determining factor for virulence, understanding the viral entry process can be a mainstay in controlling newly emerged viruses. Since viral entry is mediated by selective cellular proteases or proteins associated with receptors, identification and functional analysis of these proteins could provide a way to disrupt virus propagation. This review comprehensively discusses cellular machinery necessary for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Understanding multifactorial traits of the virus entry will provide a substantial guide to facilitate antiviral drug development.

• Journal of Veterinary Science
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.38.1-38.24
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• 2020

African swine fever (ASF), caused by the ASF virus, a member of the Asfarviridae family, is one of the most important diseases in the swine industry due to its clinical and economic impacts. Since the first report of ASF a century ago, ample information has become available, but prevention and treatment measures are still inadequate. Two waves of epizootic outbreaks have occurred worldwide. While the first wave of the epizootic outbreak was controlled in most of the infected areas, the second wave is currently active in the European and Asian continents, causing severe economic losses to the pig industry. There are different patterns of spreading in the outbreaks between those in European and Asian countries. Prevention and control of ASF are very difficult due to the lack of available vaccines and effective therapeutic measures. However, recent outbreaks in South Korea have been successfully controlled on swine farms, although feral pigs are periodically being found to be positive for the ASF virus. Therefore, we would like to share our story regarding the preparation and application of control measures. The success in controlling ASF on farms in South Korea is largely due to the awareness and education of swine farmers and practitioners, the early detection of infected animals, the implementation of strict control policies by the government, and widespread sharing of information among stakeholders. Based on the experience gained from the outbreaks in South Korea, this review describes the current understanding of the ASF virus and its pathogenic mechanisms, epidemiology, and control.

• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.218-224
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• 2000

Purpose : In Korea, vivax malaria has been reemerged since 1993 after being abscent for more than 10 years. There are several possibilities of casuality of recent epidemic, although it is still unclear. The epidemiologic studies including case analysis and entomological reseach have been undertaken for a successful control measure. But, unfortunately those studies have been rarely dealt with cases of children. Therefore, this study was designed to figure out the characteristics of epidemiolgic and clinical features in children with indigenous vivax malaria. Methods : The study 21 cases below 15 years of age, who were diagnosed as vivax malaria and resided in kyounggi-do province area during 1998. 9~1999. 8. We retrospectively analyzed epidemiologic data concernig with occurrence of vivax, and clinical manifestations, abnormal laboratory findings and outcomes including therapeutic responses. Results : All cases were inhabitants of the endemic areas for vivax malaria in northwestern part of Kyonggi-do or western Kangwon-do, and Paju-gun was the most prevalent. Indigenous malaria cases of this study were more prevalent in children above 10 years old age, and in male. Seasonally, vivax malaria in children occurred throughout the year except January, March and November, and the incidence was the highest in July. Clinical manifestations revealed that 48 hour cyclic fever pattern was the major fever pattern, and other symptoms such as headache, vomiting, poor appetites, chilling, abdominal pain and diarrhea were concomitantly developed. And splenomegaly revealed the main abnormal findings on physical examination, and anemia was the most frequent abnormal finding in laboratory examinations. Young trophozoite was frequently observed on peripheral blood smears. The therapeutic responses of chlorquine were very good in all cases, and no recurrence developed in follow up cases. Conclusion : Geographical and seasonal occurrence distributions of indigenous vivax malaria cases in children were very similar to those of adults as followings; Inhabitants of the endemic region, more prevalent in male, and more common during the summer season. Clinically, 48 hour cyclic fever pattern, splenomegaly and anemia were most frequent and important manifestations in children cases, and clinical courses were not serious. On blood smears, young trophozoite was most dominantly examined in children. Generally, the therapeutic outcomes were excellent, and recurrences were not observed.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.127-147
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• 2020

The world is suffering from numerous human and economic losses due to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19). The Korean government established a strategy to overcome the national infectious disease crisis through research and development. It is difficult to find distinctive features and changes in a specific R&D field when using the existing technical classification or science and technology standard classification. Recently, a few studies have been conducted to establish a classification system to provide information about the investment research areas of infectious diseases in Korea through a comparative analysis of Korea government-funded research projects. However, these studies did not provide the necessary information for establishing cooperative research strategies among countries in the infectious diseases, which is required as an execution plan to achieve the goals of national health security and fostering new growth industries. Therefore, it is inevitable to study information services based on the classification system and classification model for establishing a national collaborative R&D strategy. Seven classification - Diagnosis_biomarker, Drug_discovery, Epidemiology, Evaluation_validation, Mechanism_signaling pathway, Prediction, and Vaccine_therapeutic antibody - systems were derived through reviewing infectious diseases-related national-funded research projects of South Korea. A classification system model was trained by combining Scopus data with a bidirectional RNN model. The classification performance of the final model secured robustness with an accuracy of over 90%. In order to conduct the empirical study, an infectious disease classification system was applied to the coronavirus-related research and development projects of major countries such as the STAR Metrics (National Institutes of Health) and NSF (National Science Foundation) of the United States(US), the CORDIS (Community Research & Development Information Service)of the European Union(EU), and the KAKEN (Database of Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research) of Japan. It can be seen that the research and development trends of infectious diseases (coronavirus) in major countries are mostly concentrated in the prediction that deals with predicting success for clinical trials at the new drug development stage or predicting toxicity that causes side effects. The intriguing result is that for all of these nations, the portion of national investment in the vaccine_therapeutic antibody, which is recognized as an area of research and development aimed at the development of vaccines and treatments, was also very small (5.1%). It indirectly explained the reason of the poor development of vaccines and treatments. Based on the result of examining the investment status of coronavirus-related research projects through comparative analysis by country, it was found that the US and Japan are relatively evenly investing in all infectious diseases-related research areas, while Europe has relatively large investments in specific research areas such as diagnosis_biomarker. Moreover, the information on major coronavirus-related research organizations in major countries was provided by the classification system, thereby allowing establishing an international collaborative R&D projects.

• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.71-80
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• 2013

Objectives: Outbreaks of pneumonia caused by Mycoplasma pneumoniae (MP) occur every 3-4 years in Korea, most recently in 2011. The aim of our study was to determine the optimal time to perform indirect particle agglutination antibody assays to improve early diagnosis of MP pneumonia in children. Methods: A database of 206 pediatric patients treated for pneumonia at the Hanyang University Hospital from June to October 2011 was analyzed retrospectively for demographic characteristics and laboratory test results. Results: Among the 206 patients treated for pneumonia during the study period, there were 160 children (mean age, 5.44 years) diagnosed with MP pneumonia, who were studied further. The mean age of these MP pneumonia patients was 5.44 years. Antibody titers increased with increasing time between symptom onset and the collection of serum collection: MP titers were <1:640 for sera collected after 5.44 days and titers ${\geq}1:640$ for those collected after 8.58 days; P<0.001). Antibody titers were considered positive when they reached ${\geq}1:640$. In 42 MP pneumonia patients in whom there was a four-fold or greater increase in titer between successive serum samples, the optimal cut-off time-point for distinguishing between the initial and second titer groups was 7.5 days after the onset of symptoms (sensitivity, 90.5%; specificity, 92.9%). Conclusions: Negative MP antibody titers earlier than 8 days after the onset of symptoms in children with pneumonia may require repeating to confirm the diagnosis. This finding could optimize diagnosis and result in better therapeutic outcomes of MP pneumonia in children.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.22
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• pp.10021-10025
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• 2014

Background: The study aimed to describe the age distribution of breast cancer diagnosis among Chinese females for comparison with the United States and the European Union, and provide evidence for the screening target population in China. Materials and Methods: Median age was estimated from hospital databases from 7 tertiary hospitals in China. Population-based data in China, United States and European Union was extracted from the National Central Cancer Registry, SEER program and GLOBOCAN 2008, respectively. Age-standardized distribution of breast cancer at diagnosis in the 3 areas was estimated based on the World Standard Population 2000. Results: The median age of breast cancer at diagnosis was around 50 in China, nearly 10 years earlier than United States and European Union. The diagnosis age in China did not vary between subgroups of calendar year, region and pathological characteristics. With adjustment for population structure, median age of breast cancer at diagnosis was 50~54 in China, but 55~59 in United States and European Union. Conclusions: The median diagnosis age of female breast cancer is much earlier in China than in the United States and the European Union pointing to racial differences in genetics and lifestyle. Screening programs should start at an earlier age for Chinese women and age disparities between Chinese and Western women warrant further studies.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.165-175
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• 2013

Purpose: There was a global increase in the prevalence of oseltamivir-resistant influenza viruses during the 2007-2008 influenza season. This study was conducted to investigate the occurrence and characteristics of oseltamivir-resistant influenza viruses during the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 influenza seasons among patients who were treated with oseltamivir (group A) and those that did not receive oseltamivir (group B). Methods: A prospective study was conducted on 321 pediatric patients who were hospitalized because of influenza during the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 influenza seasons. Drug resistance tests were conducted on influenza viruses isolated from 91 patients. Results: There was no significant difference between the clinical characteristics of groups A and B during both seasons. Influenza A/H1N1, isolated from both groups A and B during the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 periods, was not resistant to zanamivir. However, phenotypic analysis of the virus revealed a high oseltamivir $IC_{50}$ range and that H275Y substitution of the neuraminidase (NA) gene and partial variation of the hemagglutinin (HA) gene did not affect its antigenicity to the HA vaccine even though group A had a shorter hospitalization duration and fewer lower respiratory tract complications than group B. In addition, there was no significant difference in the clinical manifestations between oseltamivir-susceptible and oseltamivir-resistant strains of influenza A/H1N1. Conclusion: Establishment of guidelines to efficiently treat influenza with oseltamivir, a commonly used drug for treating influenza in Korean pediatric patients, and a treatment strategy with a new therapeutic agent is required.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.163-171
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• 2005

Background: To perform the successful dendritic cell-based cancer immunotherapy one of the main issues to be solved is the source of antigen for DC pulsing. Limitations occur by using auto-tumor lysate due to the difficulties obtaining enough tumor tissue(s) quantitatively as well as qualitatively. In this study the possibility of allogeneic tumor cell lysate as a DC pulsing antigen has been tested in mouse melanoma pulmonary me tastasis model. Methods: B16F10 melanoma cells $(1{\timeS}10^5/mouse)$ were inoculated intra venously into the C57BL/6 mouse. Therapeutic DCs were cultured from the bone marrow myeloid lineage cells with GM-CSF and IL-4 (1,000 U/ml each) for 7 days and pulsed with lysate of either autologous B16F10 (B-DC), allogeneic K1735 (C3H/He origin; K-DC) or CloneM3 (DBA2 origin; C-DC) melanoma cells for 18 hrs. Pulsed-DCs $(1{\times}10^6/mouse)_{[CGP1]}$ were injected i.p. twice with one week interval starting from the day 1 after tumor cell inoculation. Results: Without observable toxicity, allogeneic tumor cell lysate pulsed-DC induced the significantly better anti-tumor response (tumor scale: $2.7{\pm}0.3,\;0.7{\pm}0.3\;and\;0.3{\pm}0.2$ for saline, B-DC and C-DC treated group, respectively). Along with increased tumor specific lymphocyte proliferations, induction of IFN-${\gamma}$ secretion against both auto- and allo-tumor cell lysates was observed from the DC treated mice. (w/B16F10-lysate: $44.97{\pm}10.31,\;1787.94{\pm}131.18,\;1257.15{\pm}48.27$, w/CloneM3 lysate: 0, $1591.13{\pm}1.83,\;1460.47{\pm}86.05pg/ml$ for saline, B-DC and C-DC treated group, respectively) Natural killer cell activity was also increased in the mice treated with tumor cell lysate pulsed-DC ($8.9{\pm}_{[CGP2]}0.1,\;11.6{\pm}0.8\;and\;12.6{\pm}0.7%$ specific NK activity for saline, B-DC and C-DC treated group, respectively). Conclusion: Conclusively, promising data were obtained that allogeneic-tumor cell lysate can be used as a tumor antigen for DC-based cancer immunotherapy.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.20
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• pp.8657-8660
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• 2014

Background: Yanting is one of high risk areas for esophageal cancer and the screening program was therefore initiated there. This study was aimed to investigate the dietary behaviors on the risk of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), among the individuals with normal and abnormal esophagus mucosa. Materials and Methods: A frequency matched case-controls study was proposed to estimate the different distribution of dietary behavior between individuals of control, esophagitis and cancer groups. Cancer cases were selected from hospitals. Esophagitis cases and controls were selected from screening population for ESCC. Health workers collected data for 1 year prior to interview, in terms of length of finishing a meal, temperature of eaten food and interval between water boiling and drinking. Chi-square, Kruskal-Wallis tests and unconditional logistic regression model were used to estimate differences and associations between groups. Results: Compared with controls, length of finishing a meal ${\geq}15mins$ was related to a reduced OR for cancer (OR=0.46, 95%CI, 0.22-0.97) and even compared with cases of esophagitis, the OR of cancer was reduced to 0.30 (95%CI, 0.13-0.72). The OR for often eating food at a high temperature was 2.48 (95%CI 1.06, 5.82) for ESCC as compared with controls. Interval between water boiling and drinking of ${\geq}10mins$ was associated with lower risk of cancer: the OR was 0.18 compared with controls and 0.49 with esophagitis cases (p<0.05). Conclusions: Length of eating food ${\geq}15mins$ and interval between water boiling and drinking ${\geq}10mins$ are potentially related to reduced risk of esophageal SCC, compared with individuals with normal and abnormal esophageal mucosa. Recommendations to Yanting residents to change their dietary behaviors should be made in order to reduce cancer risk.