• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.29-94
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• 1974

Today most developed countries provide modern medical care for most of the population. The rural area is the more neglected area in the medical and health field. In public health, the philosophy is that medical care for in maintenance of health is a basic right of man; it should not be discriminated against racial, environmental or financial situations. The deficiency of the medical care system, cultural bias, economic development, and ignorance of the residents about health care brought about the shortage of medical personnel and facilities on the rural areas. Moreover, medical students and physicians have been taught less about rural health care than about urban health care. Medical care, therefore, is insufficient in terms of health care personnel/and facilities in rural areas. Under such a situation, there is growing concern about the health problems among the rural population. The findings presented in this report are useful measures of the major health problems and even more important, as a guide to planning for improved medical care systems. It is hoped that findings from this study will be useful to those responsible for improving the delivery of health service for the rural population. Objectives: -to determine the health status of the residents in the rural areas. -to assess the rural population's needs in terms of health and medical care. -to make recommendations concerning improvement in the delivery of health and medical care for the rural population. Procedures: For the sampling design, the ideal would be to sample according to the proportion of the composition age-groups. As the health problems would be different by group, the sample was divided into 10 different age-groups. If the sample were allocated by proportion of composition of each age group, some age groups would be too small to estimate the health problem. The sample size of each age-group population was 100 people/age-groups. Personal interviews were conducted by specially trained medical students. The interviews dealt at length with current health status, medical care problems, utilization of medical services, medical cost paid for medical care and attitudes toward health. In addition, more information was gained from the public health field, including environmental sanitation, maternal and child health, family planning, tuberculosis control, and dental health. The sample Sample size was one fourth of total population: 1,438 The aged 10-14 years showed the largest number of 254 and the aged under one year was the smallest number of 81. Participation in examination Examination sessions usually were held in the morning every Tuesday, Wenesday, and Thursday for 3 hours at each session at the Namchun Health station. In general, the rate of participation in medical examination was low especially in ages between 10-19 years old. The highest rate of participation among are groups was the under one year age-group by 100 percent. The lowest use rate as low as 3% of those in the age-groups 10-19 years who are attending junior and senior high school in Taegu city so the time was not convenient for them to recieve examinations. Among the over 20 years old group, the rate of participation of female was higher than that of males. The results are as follows: A. Publie health problems Population: The number of pre-school age group who required child health was 724, among them infants numbered 96. Number of eligible women aged 15-44 years was 1,279, and women with husband who need maternal health numbered 700. The age-group of 65 years or older was 201 needed more health care and 65 of them had disabilities. (Table 2). Environmental sanitation: Seventy-nine percent of the residents relied upon well water as a primary source of dringking water. Ninety-three percent of the drinking water supply was rated as unfited quality for drinking. More than 90% of latrines were unhygienic, in structure design and sanitation (Table 15). Maternal and child health: Maternal health Average number of pregnancies of eligible women was 4 times. There was almost no pre- and post-natal care. Pregnancy wastage Still births was 33 per 1,000 live births. Spontaneous abortion was 156 per 1,000 live births. Induced abortion was 137 per 1,000 live births. Delivery condition More than 90 percent of deliveries were conducted at home. Attendants at last delivery were laymen by 76% and delivery without attendants was 14%. The rate of non-sterilized scissors as an instrument used to cut the umbilical cord was as high as 54% and of sickles was 14%. The rate of difficult delivery counted for 3%. Maternal death rate estimates about 35 per 10,000 live births. Child health Consultation rate for child health was almost non existant. In general, vaccination rate of children was low; vaccination rates for children aged 0-5 years with BCG and small pox were 34 and 28 percent respectively. The rate of vaccination with DPT and Polio were 23 and 25% respectively but the rate of the complete three injections were as low as 5 and 3% respectively. The number of dead children was 280 per 1,000 living children. Infants death rate was 45 per 1,000 live births (Table 16), Family planning: Approval rate of married women for family planning was as high as 86%. The rate of experiences of contraception in the past was 51%. The current rate of contraception was 37%. Willingness to use contraception in the future was as high as 86% (Table 17). Tuberculosis control: Number of registration patients at the health center currently was 25. The number indicates one eighth of estimate number of tuberculosis in the area. Number of discharged cases in the past accounted for 79 which showed 50% of active cases when discharged time. Rate of complete treatment among reasons of discharge in the past as low as 28%. There needs to be a follow up observation of the discharged cases (Table 18). Dental problems: More than 50% of the total population have at least one or more dental problems. (Table 19) B. Medical care problems Incidence rate: 1. In one month Incidence rate of medical care problems during one month was 19.6 percent. Among these health problems which required rest at home were 11.8 percent. The estimated number of patients in the total population is 1,206. The health problems reported most frequently in interviews during one month are: GI trouble, respiratory disease, neuralgia, skin disease, and communicable disease-in that order, The rate of health problems by age groups was highest in the 1-4 age group and in the 60 years or over age group, the lowest rate was the 10-14 year age group. In general, 0-29 year age group except the 1-4 year age group was low incidence rate. After 30 years old the rate of health problems increases gradually with aging. Eighty-three percent of health problems that occured during one month were solved by primary medical care procedures. Seventeen percent of health problems needed secondary care. Days rested at home because of illness during one month were 0.7 days per interviewee and 8days per patient and it accounts for 2,161 days for the total productive population in the area. (Table 20) 2. In a year The incidence rate of medical care problems during a year was 74.8%, among them health problems which required rest at home was 37 percent. Estimated number of patients in the total population during a year was 4,600. The health problems that occured most frequently among the interviewees during a year were: Cold (30%), GI trouble (18), respiratory disease (11), anemia (10), diarrhea (10), neuralgia (10), parasite disease (9), ENT (7), skin (7), headache (7), trauma (4), communicable disease (3), and circulatory disease (3) -in that order. The rate of health problems by age groups was highest in the infants group, thereafter the rate decreased gradually until the age 15-19 year age group which showed the lowest, and then the rate increased gradually with aging. Eighty-seven percent of health problems during a year were solved by primary medical care. Thirteen percent of them needed secondary medical care procedures. Days rested at home because of illness during a year were 16 days per interviewee and 44 days per patient and it accounted for 57,335 days lost among productive age group in the area (Table 21). Among those given medical examination, the conditions observed most frequently were respiratory disease, GI trouble, parasite disease, neuralgia, skin disease, trauma, tuberculosis, anemia, chronic obstructive lung disease, eye disorders-in that order (Table 22). The main health problems required secondary medical care are as fellows: (previous page). Utilization of medical care (treatment) The rate of treatment by various medical facilities for all health problems during one month was 73 percent. The rate of receiving of medical care of those who have health problems which required rest at home was 52% while the rate of those who have health problems which did not required rest was 61 percent (Table 23). The rate of receiving of medical care for all health problems during a year was 67 percent. The rate of receiving of medical care of those who have health problems which required rest at home was 82 percent while the rate of those who have health problems which did not required rest was as low as 53 percent (Table 24). Types of medical facilitied used were as follows: Hospital and clinics: 32-35% Herb clinics: 9-10% Drugstore: 53-58% Hospitalization Rate of hospitalization was 1.7% and the estimate number of hospitalizations among the total population during a year will be 107 persons (Table 25). Medical cost: Average medical cost per person during one month and a year were 171 and 2,800 won respectively. Average medical cost per patient during one month and a year were 1,109 and 3,740 won respectively. Average cost per household during a year was 15,800 won (Table 26, 27). Solution measures for health and medical care problems in rural area: A. Health problems which could be solved by paramedical workers such as nurses, midwives and aid nurses etc. are as follows: 1. Improvement of environmental sanitation 2. MCH except medical care problems 3. Family planning except surgical intervention 4. Tuberculosis control except diagnosis and prescription 5. Dental care except operational intervention 6. Health education for residents for improvement of utilization of medical facilities and early diagnosis etc. B. Medical care problems 1. Eighty-five percent of health problems could be solved by primary care procedures by general practitioners. 2. Fifteen percent of health problems need secondary medical procedures by a specialist. C. Medical cost Concidering the economic situation in rural area the amount of 2,062 won per residents during a year will be burdensome, so financial assistance is needed gorvernment to solve health and medical care problems for rural people.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.37 no.1 s.106
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• pp.26-35
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• 2004

We investigated the effect of physicochemical environmental factors on the community dynamics of phytoplanktons and bacteria at the Hoeya Dam Reservoir, a drinking water reservoir for Ulsan city. Water samples were collected and analyzed every two to four weeks at three sites along the reservoir from April to October, 2001. During the study period, the Secchi depths were between 0.4 and 3.5 m. At the surface layer of water column, temperature ranged 10.2 ~ $32.0^{\circ}C$, pH 7.3${\sim}$9.6, dissolved oxygen 5.5 ${\sim}$ 12.4 mg $L^{-1}$, $BOD_5$ 0.8 ${\sim}$ 5.0 mg $L^{-1}$, $COD_{Mn}$ 3.7 ${\sim}$ 10.0 mg $L^{-1}$, and Chl-a 8.9 ${\sim}$ 60.9 mg $m^{-3}$. At the bottom layer, temperature varied 7.2 ${\sim}$ $28.9^{\circ}C$, pH 7.1 ${\sim}$ 9.3, dissolved oxygen 0.6 ${\sim}$ 9.7 mg $L^{-1}$, $BOD_5$ 0.8 ${\sim}$ 4.5 mg $L^{-1}$, $COD_{Mn}$ 3.9 ${\sim}$ 10.0 mg $L^{-1}$, and Chl-a 4.3 ${\sim}$ 81.9 mg $m^{-3}$. The numbers of phytoplanktons were 7.4${\pm}10^2{\sim}2.6{\pm}10^5$ cells $mL^{-1}$ at surface and 2.5${\pm}10^2{\sim}2.4{\pm}10^4$ cells $mL^{-1}$ at bottom, and were positively correlated with water temperature and Chl- a concentration. Genus Stephanodiscus and genus Oscillatoria dominated on April and on May, respectively. Cyanobacterial blooms of Aphanizomenon, Microcystis, Anabaena were observed from June to early September, and thereafter Stephanodiscus and Aulacoseiral dominated again. Total microbial counts ranged 1.73${\pm}10^4{\sim}1.68{\pm}10^5$ cells $mL^{-1}$, and were positively correlated with water temperature and phytoplankton counts at surface water. Heterotrophic plate counts (HPCs) ranged 30${\sim}4.1{\pm}10^3$ CFU $mL^{-1}$, and were positively correlated with $BOD_5$ and $NO^3\;^-$-N concentration at bottom water. Unlike the total microbial counts, the numbers of fecal coliforms and fecal streptococci as well as HPCs were higher at the bottom than the surface layer and were highest at the upper a site among the three sampling sites. Since the concentrations of fecal coliforms and streptococci were still high at the bottom of site c, where intake for water treatment plant is located, it appeared that special management of water treatment processes may be needed especially after strong rainfall.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.133-148
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• 1995

This study was to identify the factors affecting the performance in health promoting lifestyle and measuring health promoting lifestyle. The subjects for this study were all adult in rural area, Kakbuk Nyun, Chung-do Gun, Kyungpook, Korea. The data were collected during the period from April 1 to April 30, 1995. The instruments used for this study were the health promoting lifestyle by Park(1995). The results of this study are as follows. Health condition felt by the subjects was worse in female group and was getting worse according as the age increase. According to health promoting life style implementation questionnaire, more than half of the subjects responded "never" in deep breathing 3 times a day item and non-smoking item; more than half of the subjects responded "yes" in 3 meal a day item, home-cooked meals item, never to omit breakfast item and frequent wearing of cotton underwear item. Health promoting life style implementation by health condition is higher in healthy group and frequency of consulting a specialist is higher in unhealthy group. Health promoting life style implementation by sex is higher in male group. Frequency, of consulting a specialist and non-excessive drinking are higher in female group. Health promoting life style implementation by age showed that the implementation of never omitting breakfast, keeping early hours and proper sleeping is higher in old age group ; that of enjoying hobby, pastime, cleaning as well as reading health books is higher in young age group. Health promoting life style implementation by religion showed that the implementation of deep breathing 3 times more a day, regular checking of blood pressure, never having non-healthful food and keeping right posture in sitting and standing is higher in religion group. Health promoting life style implementation by education is higher in highly-educated group ; the implementation of keeping early hours is higher in low-educated group. Health promoting life style implementation by marriage state showed that the implementation of deep breathing 3 times more a day, twenty minutes of brisk physical movement three or four times a week, enjoying his or her own time, relaxation to relieve from tension and pressure and equalized movement of each part of body is higher in unmarred group ; that of having elaborately cooked food, never omitting three meals a day and keeping early hours is higher in married group. Health promoting life style implementation by the number of family members showed that more-member-group has more plans and objectives for their future. Health promoting life style implementation by family type showed that the implementation of reading health books and articles, living with positive way of thinking and enjoying favorite hobby in pastime is higher in nuclear families ; that of having three meals a day never omitting breakfast is higher in large families.

• Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.227-237
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• 2008

Arsenic has recently become of the most serious environmental concerns, and the worldwide regulation of arsenic fur drinking water has been reinforced. Arsenic contaminated groundwater and soil have been frequently revealed as well, and arsenic contamination and its treatment and measures have been domestically raised as one of the most important environmental issues. Arsenic behavior in geo-environment is principally affected by oxides and clay minerals, and particularly iron (oxy)hydroxides have been well known to be most effective in controlling arsenic. Among a number of iron (oxy)hydroxides, for this reason, 2-line ferrihydrite was selected in this study to investigate its effect on arsenic behavior. Adsorption of 2-line ferrihydrite was characterized and compared between As(III) and As(V) which are known to be the most ubiquitous species among arsenic forms in natural environment. Two-line ferrihydrite synthesized in the lab as the adsorbent of arsenic had $10\sim200$ nm for diameter, $247m^{2}/g$ for specific surface area, and 8.2 for pH of zero charge, and those representative properties of 2-line ferrihydrite appeared to be greatly suitable to be used as adsorbent of arsenic. The experimental results on equilibrium adsorption indicate that As(III) showed much stronger adsorption affinity onto 2-line ferrihydrite than As(V). In addition, the maximum adsorptions of As(III) and As(V) were observed at pH 7.0 and 2.0, respectively. In particular, the adsorption of As(III) did not show any difference between pH conditions, except for pH 12.2. On the contrary, the As(V) adsorption was remarkably decreased with increase in pH. The results obtained from the detailed experiments investigating pH effect on arsenic adsorption show that As(III) adsorption increased up to pH 8.0 and dramatically decreased above pH 9.2. In case of As(V), its adsorption steadily decreased with increase in pH. The reason the adsorption characteristics became totally different depending on arsenic species is attributed to the fact that chemical speciation of arsenic and surface charge of 2-line ferrihydrite are significantly affected by pH, and it is speculated that those composite phenomena cause the difference in adsorption between As(III) and As(V). From the view point of adsorption kinetics, adsorption of arsenic species onto 2-line ferrihydrite was investigated to be mostly completed within the duration of 2 hours. Among the kinetic models proposed so for, power function and elovich model were evaluated to be the most suitable ones which can simulate adsorption kinetics of two kinds of arsenic species onto 2-line ferrihydrite.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.69-92
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• 2015

The explosion of social media data has led to apply text-mining techniques to analyze big social media data in a more rigorous manner. Even if social media text analysis algorithms were improved, previous approaches to social media text analysis have some limitations. In the field of sentiment analysis of social media written in Korean, there are two typical approaches. One is the linguistic approach using machine learning, which is the most common approach. Some studies have been conducted by adding grammatical factors to feature sets for training classification model. The other approach adopts the semantic analysis method to sentiment analysis, but this approach is mainly applied to English texts. To overcome these limitations, this study applies the Word2Vec algorithm which is an extension of the neural network algorithms to deal with more extensive semantic features that were underestimated in existing sentiment analysis. The result from adopting the Word2Vec algorithm is compared to the result from co-occurrence analysis to identify the difference between two approaches. The results show that the distribution related word extracted by Word2Vec algorithm in that the words represent some emotion about the keyword used are three times more than extracted by co-occurrence analysis. The reason of the difference between two results comes from Word2Vec's semantic features vectorization. Therefore, it is possible to say that Word2Vec algorithm is able to catch the hidden related words which have not been found in traditional analysis. In addition, Part Of Speech (POS) tagging for Korean is used to detect adjective as "emotional word" in Korean. In addition, the emotion words extracted from the text are converted into word vector by the Word2Vec algorithm to find related words. Among these related words, noun words are selected because each word of them would have causal relationship with "emotional word" in the sentence. The process of extracting these trigger factor of emotional word is named "Emotion Trigger" in this study. As a case study, the datasets used in the study are collected by searching using three keywords: professor, prosecutor, and doctor in that these keywords contain rich public emotion and opinion. Advanced data collecting was conducted to select secondary keywords for data gathering. The secondary keywords for each keyword used to gather the data to be used in actual analysis are followed: Professor (sexual assault, misappropriation of research money, recruitment irregularities, polifessor), Doctor (Shin hae-chul sky hospital, drinking and plastic surgery, rebate) Prosecutor (lewd behavior, sponsor). The size of the text data is about to 100,000(Professor: 25720, Doctor: 35110, Prosecutor: 43225) and the data are gathered from news, blog, and twitter to reflect various level of public emotion into text data analysis. As a visualization method, Gephi (http://gephi.github.io) was used and every program used in text processing and analysis are java coding. The contributions of this study are as follows: First, different approaches for sentiment analysis are integrated to overcome the limitations of existing approaches. Secondly, finding Emotion Trigger can detect the hidden connections to public emotion which existing method cannot detect. Finally, the approach used in this study could be generalized regardless of types of text data. The limitation of this study is that it is hard to say the word extracted by Emotion Trigger processing has significantly causal relationship with emotional word in a sentence. The future study will be conducted to clarify the causal relationship between emotional words and the words extracted by Emotion Trigger by comparing with the relationships manually tagged. Furthermore, the text data used in Emotion Trigger are twitter, so the data have a number of distinct features which we did not deal with in this study. These features will be considered in further study.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.41-52
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors related to allergic diseases based on the health behavior of the youth in multicultural families according to the data from Tenth Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-Based Survey 2014 (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention). The subjects from 712 multicultural adolescents were analyzed by the SPSS program. For the characteristics of health behavior of the multicultural youth, 267 students (37.5%) have experienced drinking alcohol, 164 students (23.0%) have experienced smoking, and 35 students (4.9%) have experienced taking drugs. Also, 198 students (27.8%) were depressed, 259 students (36.3%) are suffering from stress, and 286 students (40.2%) failed to fully relieve fatigue. In addition, 497 students (69.8%) consider themselves as healthy, 449 students (63.1%) consider themselves as happy, and 251 students (35.3%) consider themselves as overweight. Among the allergic disease of the multicultural youth, 46 middle school students (6.5%) and 35 high school students (4.9%) have asthma, 95 middle school students (13.3%) and 87 high school students (12.2%) have allergic rhinitis, and 67 middle school students (9.4%) and 53 high school students (7.4%) have atopic dermatitis. 47 male students (6.6%) and 34 female students (4.8%) have asthma, 81 male students (11.4%) and 101 female students (14.1%) have allergic rhinitis, and 53 male students (7.4%) and 67 female students (9.4%) have atopic dermatitis. Among the multicultural youth, 81 students (11.4%) have asthma, 182 students (25.5%) have allergic rhinitis, and 120 students (16.8%) have atopic dermatitis. For the allergic diseases from the health behavior of the multicultural youth, depression (p<0.001), alcohol experience (p<0.05), drug experience (p<0.05), health recognition (p<0.05), happiness recognition (p<0.05), and body type recognition (p<0.05) had a statistically significant relationship with asthma. Fatigue recovery recognition (p<0.001), health recognition (p<0.001) and stress recognition (p<0.05) had a statistically significant relationship with allergic rhinitis. Body type recognition (p<0.01), depression (p<0.05), fatigue recovery recognition (p<0.05), health recognition (p<0.05), and happiness recognition (p<0.05) had a statistically significant relationship with atopic dermatitis. Such results show that schools and society need to educate the multicultural youth about health, happiness, and body type recognition which are big factors of allergic diseases. Schools and society also need to be more systematic and continuous in order to help multicultural youth to be have correct recognition of depression, stress and fatigue recovery.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.24 no.3 s.35
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• pp.363-372
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• 1991

We used the health screening data of some rural and urban residents to examine the cross-sectional association between leukocyte count and hypertension. The 206 male and 203 female rural residents were selected by multi-stage cluster sampling method in Kyungsan-Kun area of Kyungbuk province in 1985 and 600 urban residents were selected by the same sampling method as the rural residents in Daegu city of the same province in 1986 compatible with age-sex distribution of Daegu city of 1985 census, but of whom 384 actually responded. The rest of 600 were replaced by age and sex with those who were members of the medical insurance plan visiting the health management department of the university hospital to get the biannual preventive medical checkups. Excluded in the analysis were those having hypertensive history, diseases and extreme outlying values of the screening tests, leaving 373 rural and 571 urban residents. Leukocyte count was measured with ELT-8 Laser shadow method and the unit $cells/mm^3$, Blood pressures were determined with an aneroid sphygmomanometer with pre-standardized method and hypertensives were defined as those showing systolic blood pressure more than 140mmHg and/or diastolic blood pressure more than 90mmHg. Total residents pooled (N=944) showed a significant difference between hypertensives and normotensives ($6965.93{\pm}1997.01\;vs\;6490.61{\pm}1941.32,\;P=0.00$) and in rural residents was noted the similar significant difference (P=0.03). None of significant differences were noted in any stratum stratified by residency and sex. Compared to the lowest quintile of WBC, 2/5 quintile showed odds ratio 0.99 (95% Confidence interval, Ci 0.62-1.59), 3/5 quintile 1.41 (95% CI 0.90-2.21), 4/5 quintile 1.76 (95% CI. 1.14-2.72), and highest quintile 1.80 (1.15-2.82) in the total residents. Likelihood ratio test for linear trend for it indicated a significant trend ($X^2_{trend}=5.53,\;df=1,\;P<0.05$). There were no other significant odds ratios compared to the lowest quintile of WBC in strata stratified by residency and sex. The odds ratios in total residents which had showed significant odds ratios became nonsignificant and of reduced magnitude after controlling age, frequency of smoking and drinking with multiple logistic. regression. In each stratum, it changed magnitudes of odds ratios slightly and unstably. None of the trend tests showed any significant trend. These results suggest that the Friedman et al's finding of association between leukocyte count and hypertension may be due to an statistical type I error resulting from the data dredging in an exploratory study, in which more than 800 variables were screened as possible predictors of hypertension.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.71-80
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• 1998

This study examines the levels of carbohydrate antigen 19-9(CA19-9) and cancer antigen 125(CA125) in serum and its related factors in healthy Korean population. Although CA19-9 and CA125 have been widely used tumor markers for gastroenteric cancers and ovarian cancer in Western countries, there are no information available on the serum levels of CA19-9 and CA125 in healthy population and the factors affecting the levels of these tumor markers in Korea. A cross-sectional study was performed to measure CA19-9 and CA125 among 76 healthy males and 95 healthy females in Korea. CA19-9 and CA125 were quantitated using solid-phase radioimmunoassay kits. Informations on the factors which might be related to the levels of these markers were collected by questionnaire(e.g., smoking, alcohol consumption, menstruation, oral pill use, breast-feeding history, etc.). There was no statistically significant difference in the mean of CA19-9 concentration between men(10.4 u/ml) and women(10.1 u/ml), whereas the mean of CA125 levels(11.2 u/ml) was higher in women than that(2.5 u/ml) in men. Although there was a statistically significant association between CA19-9 and average number of cigarette consumed per day(r=0.59, p=0.026) and total number of cigarettes consumed in women(r=0.74, p=0.003), the significance disappeared by multiple regression analysis after adjusting age and body mass index. Later age of menopause(p=0.035) and longer duration of breast-feeding(p=0.050) were significant predictors for CA125 levels in women by multiple regression analysis after adjusting age and body mass index. In conclusion, CA19-9 can be used as a stable tumor marker in clinical practices, however, menstruation and breast-feeding should be considered when CA125 is used in women.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.263-277
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• 2005

Objectives: This study aimed to reveal the oral health conditions based on the dental health behaviors of a community-dwelling elderly. Methods: The subjects included 206 rural dwellers(100 men & 106 women) aged over 65 years old, who received dental health check-ups in the local public health center and its branches attached to 6 respective Myons of Chunchongnamdo Province, during the 2-month period from Jan. 1st to Feb. 28th, 2005. They were examined by dentists and given self-administered questionnaires asking about their dental heaith behaviors and subjective symptoms of gingival bleeding. Results: The oral health conditions based on dental health behavior showed that those who have not taken dental health service a year were found to have significantly greater number of missing teeth(p=0.002), DMFT(p=0.002) and CPITN(p=0.018), and those who have not observed intra-oral conditions a week to have significantly less number of filled teeth(p=0.002) and significantly greater number of missing teeth(p=0.000) and CPITN (p=0.000) than their respective counterparts. In terms of brushing, those who brushed their teeth below "3 times/day" were found to have significantly greater number of decayed teeth(p=0.000), missing teeth(p=0.000), DMFT(p=0.000) and CPITN(p=0.000) than their counterparts. In terms of time spent in brushing, those who spends "below 3 minutes" had significantly greater number of missing teeth(p=0.002) and DMFT(p=0.041), and significantly less number of filled teeth(p=0.036). According to the use of aid tools for cleaning teeth, the group who don't use them had significantly greater number of DMFT(p=0.041) and CPITN(p=0.018) than its counterpart. Classified by smoking habits, smoking groups had significantly greater number of decayed teeth(p=0.035) and CPITN(p=0.001) than non-smoking groups. Multiple regression analysis of the study data revealed that the significant factors influencing number of decayed teeth were number of brushing, sex and intra-oral observation (explanatory power of 14.2%). The significant factors for number of filled teeth were sex, intra-oral observation, use of aid tools, frequency of brushing, subjective health conditions and drinking of sweet beverages(explanatory power of 18.2%), those for number of missing teeth, number of brushing and age(explanatory power of 13.9%) those for DMFT, number of brushing, sex, use of dental service, age(explanatory power: 13.5%), and those for CPITN included smoking habits, use of dental service, use of aid tools (explanatory power: 10.8%). Conclusions: The study results revealed that the dental health behavior of the elderly population is in poor conditions and their consequent intra-oral health conditions are not good. To improve their oral conditions, public campaign and education will be needed to modify unhealthy dental health behaviors.

• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.137-148
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• 2003

Introduction: This research was performed to contract the attitude of dietary restriction and the psychological problems such as depressive mood and perceived stress and to investigate the relationship of these and obesity in women who visited the obesity clinic. Methods: During May 2001, sociodemographic variables, physical characteristics, Three Factor Eating Questionnaire(TFEQ), Symptom Check List-90-R(SCL-90-R) and Perceived Stress Scale were assessed from 150 female who visited the obesity clinics which were located at downtown, Seoul and the Hospital of Ajou University, Medical College. Hamilton depression rating scale(HDRS) was estimated by author. And then 116 female cases who filled up the questionnaire faithfully were included. Results: Obese group more than Body Mass Index(BMI) $25.0kg/m^2$ was 50% of the total subjects. BMI was increased as the age goes up(p<0.001). The frequency of unmarried cases in the under normal weight group was high rate of 48.8% while it in the obese group was 13.8%(p<0.001). There was no significant difference in the rate of smoking and alcohol drinking among subjects by BMI. There was no significant difference of TFEQ among subjects by BMI and the percent of body fat. Factor 2(r=0.27, p<0.01) and Factor 3(r=0.24, p<0.01) were significantly correlated with Global Severity Index(GSI). Only the paranoia scale among each estimated mean value of T scores of SCL-90-R by BMI was the significant difference between the overweight group and the obese group(p<0.05). T scores of scales of SCL-90-R were less than 50, but T scores of the under normal weight group and the obese group were higher than overweight group. GSI was significantly correlated with HDRS(r=0.75, p<0.01) and Perceived Stress Scale(r=0.32, p<0.01). Depressive mood in the obese group was significantly higher than non-obese group that HDRS was compared to two groups by the percent of body fat(p<0.05). Perceived Stress Scale was no significant correlation with BMI and the percent of body fat. All of the subject were in trouble of high stress. Stress affected dietary restriction owing that perceived stress had a relation with Factor 2(r=0.29, p<0.01) and Factor 3(r=0.37, p<0.01). Also, it affected psychological characteristics owing that perceived stress had a relation with the depression scale, GSI and HDRS(r=0.33, r=0.32, r=0.34, p<0.01). Conclusion: Obese women have more psychological difficulties including depression and high perceived stress, which closely related with the attitude of dietary restriction. Psychiatric intervention and aggressive assessment of psychological problems will be needed to the people who visit the obesity clinic in the future.