• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.26
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• pp.11.1-11.6
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• 2011

Objects: The prevalence of asthma has increased in recent decades globally. The objective of the present study is to elucidate whether hospitalization for bronchiolitis in infancy and low socioeconomic status interact for bronchial hyperreactivity during teenage years. Method: We studied 522 children age 13-14 years attending schools in rural and urban areas to investigate the risk factors for bronchial hyperreactivity (BHR), defined as a provocation concentration of methacholine that causes a decrease of 20% ($PC_{20}$) in forced expiratory volume within 1 second. Clinical examination, skin prick test, spirometry, and methacholine challenge were performed on all study subjects, who provided written consent. We used multivariate logistic regression to investigate the risk factors for BHR, and analyze the interaction between hospitalization for bronchiolitis in infancy and low socioeconomic status. Results: Forty-six (10.3%) positive BHR cases were identified. In the multivariate logistic analysis, as independent predictors of BHR, adjusted odds ratio of bronchiolitis diagnosed before 2 years of age in low income families was 13.7 (95% confidence interval, 1.4 to 135.0), compared to reference group, controlling for age, gender, parental allergy history, skin prick test, and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure. Interaction was observed between bronchiolitis before 2 years old and low socioeconomic status on children's bronchial hyperreactivity (p-interaction=0.025). Conclusions: This study showed that bronchiolitis diagnosed before 2 years of age and low socioeconomic status interacted on children's bronchial hyperreactivity. Prevention of acute respiratory infection in early childhood in low socioeconomic status is important to prevent BHR as a precursor of asthma.

• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.149-159
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• 2015

Crohn's disease is a chronic idiopathic inflammatory disease of the intestines characterized by frequent relapse and remission. It often develops in children and adolescents, who are vulnerable to repeated exposure to ionizing radiations. Magnetic resonance enterography (MRE) is an increasingly important radiation-free imaging modality that is used to evaluate pediatric patients with Crohn's disease. MRE can evaluate extraluminal and extraintestinal abnormalities as well as the status of the bowel wall. In addition, MRE has an advantage in the evaluation of the small bowel involvement. MRE can be used for the initial diagnosis of Crohn's disease, and can aid in the assessment of disease activity and complications such as penetrating and fibrostenotic diseases. The aims of this article are to review the MRE technique for obtaining diagnostic and high-quality images and to discuss interpretations of imaging findings in patients with Crohn's disease.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.sup1
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• pp.31-36
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• 2016

Scientific evidence on all aspects of smoking amongst youth is very important for designing appropriate interventions to reduce smoking among this vulnerable population. This paper describes current access to anti-smoking information among school children aged 13 to 15 years in Vietnam in 2014 and examines its potential impact on preventing smoking initiation. The data used in this paper were obtained from the 2014 Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) in Vietnam. Students were asked questions about their level of awareness of anti-smoking information from various sources in the past 30 days and about lessons in school regarding the dangers of tobacco use during the last 12 months. Those who have never smoked were asked "whether or not they thought about avoiding cigarettes because of health warnings on cigarette packages" and answers were analyzed in combination with data on access to anti-smoking information from other sources. The prevalence of exposure to antismoking campaigns was high among school children in Viet Nam: 55.3% of current smokers reported thoughts of smoking cessation because of health warnings on cigarette packages; 60.5% of never smokers avoided initiating smoking because of the same health warnings. The potential impact of graphic health warnings to prevent school-aged children from smoking initiation would be stronger if there was concurrent access to anti-smoking programs on the dangers of tobacco use in schools. However, school education for tobacco prevention and control has not been as strong as expected. A more comprehensive school curriculum on tobacco prevention and control is recommended to reinforce antismoking messages among school children.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.481-491
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• 2018

Allergic asthma is one of the most enduring diseases of the airway. The T-helper cells and regulatory T-cells are critically involved in inflammatory responses, mucus hypersecretion, airway remodelling and in airway hyper-responsiveness. Cigarette smoke (CS) has been found to aggravate inflammatory responses in asthma. Though currently employed drugs are effective, associated side effects demand identification and development of novel drugs with negligible or no adverse effects. Rutin, plant-derived flavonoid has been found to possess antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. We investigated the ability of rutin to modulate T-cells and inhibit inflammation in experimentally-induced asthma in cigarette smoke exposed mice. Separate groups of neonatal mice were exposed to CS for 10 days from post-natal days 2 to 11. After 2 weeks, the mice were sensitized and challenged with ovalbumin (OVA). Treatment group were given rutin (37.5 or 75 mg/kg body weight) during OVA sensitization and challenge. Rutin treatment was found to significantly inhibit cellular infiltration in the airways and Th2 and Th17 cytokine levels as well. Flow cytometry revealed effectively raised $CD4^+CD25^+Fox3^+$ Treg cells and supressed Th17 cell population on rutin treatment. Airway hyper-responsiveness observed following CS and OVA challenge were inhibited by rutin. $NF-{\kappa}B$ and iNOS, chief regulators of inflammatory responses robustly activated by CS and OVA were down-regulated by rutin. Rutin also inhibited the expression of matrix metalloproteinase 9, thereby aiding in prevention of airway remodelling in asthma thereby revealing to be a potent candidate in asthma therapy.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.133-140
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• 2008

In order to evaluate the possible environmental lead hazard in children's playground and to test the practicability of field portable x-ray fluorescence(FPXRF) for environmental lead measurement, authors investigated lead concentration of lead-based paint on the surface of children's playing equipments in the playground of 13 apartments using FPXRF at the site in city A, Choongnam province. 93 spots were determined surface lead concentrations 3 times each using a FPXRF. Out of 93 spots, 83 spots (92%) were revealed to have lead in paint and mean concentration was $1.12{\pm}1.76mg/cm^2$. The mean concentration of lead on the surface of playing equipments at the apartments near the main street was $1.20mg/cm^2$ and higher than those at the apartments far away from the main street($0.81mg/cm^2$)(p<0.05). The mean concentration of lead on the surface of playing equipments painted with yellow color was $3.23mg/cm^2$ and the highest among all colors, whereas equipment painted white color was non-detectable. PVC and etc materials for construction of playing equipment showed higher surface lead concentration than other materials. The result suggests that it is necessary to be taken caution of the lead exposure in the playground of apartment and it should be taken any kind of confirmative action to prevent unwanted lead exposure from surface lead source of playing equipment. Authors found that FPXRF was very reliable and useful for field measurement to detect lead on the painted surface.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.191-200
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• 1997

The purpose of this research was to test a model of intergenerational transmission of marital instability. An important aspect of the present study was to test the direct and indiect intergenerational transmission processes of marital instability. This study revealed four very important findings. First the effects of parental divorce on children's marital instability were both direct and indirect through mate selection risk factors marital quality and marital commitment. Second premarital backgrounds such as socioeconomic status of parents and relative heterogeneity between spouse before marriage were important to explain one's marital relationship. Third the higher the barriers the higher the marital commitment. Fourth marital quality and marital commitment were important predictors of marital instability. Taken together this study supports the intergenerational transmission perspective that exposure to conflict marriage in one's own childhood would forecast lower marital sat sfaction higher conflict and higher marital instability in the marital relationship. The findings from this study also underline the importance of predisposing marital characteristics such as parental socioeconomic status and relative heterogeneity in explaining marital relationship.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.472-481
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• 2012

Objectives: This study aims to investigate the AD (allergic diseases: asthma, allergic rhinitis and atopic dermatitis) prevalence among elementary schoolchildren in an industrial city, Ulsan, and identify major environmental risk factors associated with AD prevalence. Methods: Data on the physician-diagnosed prevalence over the past 12 months and potential risk factors of AD were collected through a questionnaire from a 2009-2010 survey of 4,067 schoolchildren living in different urban environments. The logistic regression analysis was performed to assess differences in AD prevalence among the areas and to determine which environmental factors impacted AD. Results: Our survey results showed that the AD prevalence rate ranged between 26.2% and 35.9%. Children living in polluted areas (near industrial and central urban areas) had about a 10% higher prevalence of AD than did those living in coastal or suburban residences. The Chi-Square test demonstrated that this local difference was statistically significant before and after adjustment of major confounders such as parental AD history and parental education. The results of the logistic regression analysis showed a statistically significant association between several environmental factors (ventilation in winter, odor conditions and exposure to traffic smoke, and outdoor $PM_{10}/O_3$ pollution) and the prevalence of AD found by multivariate model after adjusting confounders. Conclusion: These results suggest that local differences in AD prevalence are significantly associated with outdoor environmental factors. Although there are likely to be other risk factors for AD, living in a polluted area and exposure to high levels of air pollutants can contribute to an increased risk of childhood AD.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 2016

Causal inference methodologies have been developed for the past decade to estimate the unconfounded effect of an exposure under several key assumptions. These assumptions include, but are not limited to, the stable unit treatment value assumption, the strong ignorability of treatment assignment assumption, and the assumption that propensity scores be bounded away from zero and one (the positivity assumption). Of these assumptions, the first two have received much attention in the literature. Yet the positivity assumption has been recently discussed in only a few papers. Propensity scores of zero or one are indicative of deterministic exposure so that causal effects cannot be defined for these subjects. Therefore, these subjects need to be removed because no comparable comparison groups can be found for such subjects. In this paper, using currently available causal inference methods, we evaluate the effect of arbitrary cutoffs in the distribution of propensity scores and the impact of those decisions on bias and efficiency. We propose a tree-based method that performs well in terms of bias reduction when the definition of positivity is based on a single confounder. This tree-based method can be easily implemented using the statistical software program, R. R code for the studies is available online.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.57-68
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• 2010

This study assessed the lifetime cancer and non-cancer risk of aldehydes and volatile organic compounds exposure of young children at child-care facilities and indoor playgrounds in Korea. The samples were collected at various children's facilities (40 day-care houses, 42 child-care centers, 44 kindergartens, and 42 indoor playgrounds) in summer (Jul~Sep, 2007), winter (Jan~Feb, 2008) and Spring (Mar~Apr, 2008) periods, and analyzed by GC-MS. We estimated the lifetime excess cancer risks (ECRs) of formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, benzene, chloroform, CCI4 and tetrachloroethylene, and the hazard quotients (HQs) of Non-carcinogens (toluene, xylene, benzaldehyde and formaldehyde). Formaldehyde evaluated both cancer and non-cancer risk. The average ECRs of formaldehyde for young children were $1\times10^{-4}{\sim}1\times10^{-5}$ level in all facilities. HQs of four non-carcinogens did not exceed 1.0 for all subjects in all facilities.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.64 no.2
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• pp.68-75
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• 2021

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has been spreading worldwide since December 2019. Hundreds of cases of children and adolescents with Kawasaki disease (KD)-like hyperinflammatory illness have been reported in Europe and the United States during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic with or without shock and cardiac dysfunction. These patients tested positive for the polymerase chain reaction or antibody test for SARS-CoV-2 or had a history of recent exposure to COVID-19. Clinicians managing such patients coined new terms for this new illness, such as COVID-19-associated hyperinflammatory response syndrome, pediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome temporally associated with COVID-19, or COVID-19-associated multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). The pathogenesis of MIS-C is unclear; however, it appears similar to that of cytokine storm syndrome. MIS-C shows clinical features similar to KD, but differences between them exist with respect to age, sex, and racial distributions and proportions of patients with shock or cardiac dysfunction. Recommended treatments for MIS-C include intravenous immunoglobulin, corticosteroids, and inotropic or vasopressor support. For refractory patients, monoclonal antibody to interleukin-6 receptor (tocilizumab), interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (anakinra), or monoclonal antibody to tumor necrosis factor (infliximab) may be recommended. Patients with coronary aneurysms require aspirin or anticoagulant therapy. The prognosis of MIS-C seemed favorable without sequelae in most patients despite a reported mortality rate of approximately 1.5%.