• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.163-167
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• 2002

Purpose: Interleukin 1$\beta$ (IL-1$\beta$) polymorphisms are associated with hypochlorhydria, atrophic gastritis, and increased risk of gastric cancer in Caucasians. We tried to determine whether the IL-1.. and IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1 RN) genetic polymorphisms contribute to the development of gastric cancer and the specific type of gastritis in Korean. Materials and Methods: The study population was comprised of 128 gastric cancer patients with histologically proven carcinoma and 63 normal healthy individuals. Sixty-eight carcinomas were of intestinal-type and sixty tumors were of diffuse-type. No patient had a familial gastric cancer history. The 511 bp and 31 bp polymorphisms in the IL-1.. were genotyped by polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-restriction fragment length polymorphism. The polymorphism of the IL-1 RN was analyzed with variable number tandem repeat after PCR. Results: The genotype of 511C/-31T of IL-1$\beta$ and allele 1 of IL-1 RN was dominant in the present subjects. The allelic frequencies of the C allele IL-1$\beta$, which is a high risk genotype for gastric cancer, were 0.551 and 0.429 in gastric cancer and normal controls, respectively. Statistically, significant difference in allelic frequencies of three polymorphic sites between gastric cancer patients and normal controls, and between intestinal-type and diffuse-type was not observed. Conclusions: These results suggest that the polymorphisms of IL-1$\beta$ and IL-1 RN may not contribute to the development of Korean gastric caner and that other endogenous or exogenous factors will be important for gastric carcinogenesis.

• Journal of Periodontal and Implant Science
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.585-597
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• 2003

Porphyromonas gingivalis has been implicated as an important periodontophathic bacterium in the etiology and progression of periodontal diseases. It has been reported that P.gingivalis may mediate periodontal destruction not only directly through its virulence factors, but also indirectly by including complex host mediated inflammatory reponses. The purpose of this study was t o evaluate the effects of P.gingivalis on the bone formation and resorption by osteoblasts. For this purpose, after determining the concentration below which sonicated P.gingivalis extracts (SPEs) have no cytotoxicity on mouse calvarial primary osteoblastic (POB) cells, we investigated the effects of SPEs on the alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) expression (MMP-2, -9, 13), and prostaglandin $E_2$ ($PGE_2$) release in POB cells by treatment with SPEs below that concentration. The results were as follows; 1. SPEs showed no cytotoxic effect on POB cells up to a concentration of 1 ${\mu}m$/ml. 2. The treatment with SPEs reduced ALP activity in a dose-dependent manner in POB cells, In addition, when we investigated the effect of SPEs (1 ${\mu}m$/ml) on ALP activity for different exposure periods, statistically significant inhibition of ALP activity was shown at 2 days of exposure, and further significant inhibition occurred by extending the periods of exposure. 3. The treatment with SPEs stimulated the gene expression of MMP-9 in POB cells. 4. The pre-treatment with SPEs increased the amount of $PGE_2$ released in POB cells. In summary, the present study shows that P.gingivalis could inhibit osteogenesis and stimulate bone resorption not only by reducing ALP activity but also by increasing MMP-9 mRNA expression in osteoblasts, possibly through an endogenous $PGE_2$ pathway. In addition, our results suggest that if P.gingivalis affects osteoblasts in early differentiation stage, such effects by P. gingivalis could be irreversible.

• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.438-446
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• 2007

Viable cells of periodontal ligament would be an important factor for the successful replantation of an avulsed tooth. Therefore, it is critical to choose the storage medium for the preservation of traumatically avulsed teeth. Growth factors and hormones could be considered for the therapeutic application of the maintenance of viable periodontal ligament fibroblasts (PDLFs). Epidermal growth factor (EGF) has been suggested as an important player for the regeneration and wound healing process on other tissues. Therefore, EGF was evaluated for the therapeutic application on avulsed teeth. In addition, the synergic effect of EGF with tri-iodothyronine (T3) and heparin-binding epidermal growth factor-like growth factor (HB-EGF). The cell proliferation of PDLFs was determined by MTT assay and increased dose-dependently up to 10 ng/ml in the presence of EGF. Maximum cellular growth was shown at the concentration of 10 ng/ml EGF. Also, EGF promoted the wound healing of PDLFs examined by in vitro wound healing assay. Combined effects of EGF with T3 or HB-EGF on the proliferation of PDLFs were also studied. Interestingly, EGF showed the synergic effect on the proliferation of PDLFs with T3 and HB-EGF. To find out the mechanism of the synergic effect of EGF and T3, the effect of T3 on the expression of endogenous EGF receptor was determined by RT-PCR. The result was that T3 enhanced the expression of EGF receptor in PDLFs. It suggested that EGF might be a good choice for a therapeutic application, which can be used as combination with T3 and HB-EGF.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.99-119
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• 2006

Objectives: This study intends to understand the difference within group of social support level and the effect of social support to health behaviors and health status of the elderly by selecting the old of local society as target. Methods: Data were obtained from self-administered questionnaire of 8,688 persons, older than 65 years, living in a community. We measured the sociodemographic characteristics, social support(family support, other support, quality of support), physical health state(subjective health status, number of chronic disease), physical function state(activities of daily living; ADL, instrumental activities of daily living; IADL), cognition state(mini-mental state examination-Korean; MMSE-K) and depression state(short form of geriatric depression scale; SGDS), health behaviors(smoking, drinking, exercise, eating habit). Univariate, multinominal logistic regression and covariance structure analysis were employed to analyze factors affecting on the social support of the elderly. Results: When considering the degree of social support by the sociodemographic characteristics of the older adults, the family support, other support and quality of support is better when the old is male, young, high education and self-reported living status is good and it has significance statistically. When considering the relation between social support and health status, the family support, other support and quality of support is better when the old's subjective and objective physical health status is good. The family support, other support and quality of support is better when the old's subjective health status is better. The other support and quality of support is better when the old's ADL(activities of daily living) and IADL(instrumental activities of daily living) are good. The family support, other support and quality of support is better when the old's cognitive function and depression state is better. When considering the relation between social support and health behaviors, in case of smoking and drinking, the quality of support, family support and other support is better when the old smokes and drinks rather than the old does not. In case of exercise and eating habit, the family support, other support and quality of support is better when the old exercises and eats regularly rather than the old does not. It has significance statistically. From the result of performing covariance structure analysis by structural equation modeling(SEM) with two endogenous variable(health behaviors and health status) and one exogenous variable(social support), factor loading of health status is 0.74 and factor loading of health behaviors is 0.05. The social support explains health status of 55.4% and health behaviors of 2.9%. Conclusions: This study has the meaning that it finds the difference of social support generating from inside of the group for the old residing in city and country and specifies the effect that the difference of social support influences to health status and health behaviors. From now on, in the development of health improvement strategy of the olds, it is necessary to approach from inclusive aspect while considering psychosocial factor such as social support and social economical factor as well as health status.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.288-298
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• 1992

Since the major important factors limiting plant growth and crop productivity are environmental stresses, of which low temperature is the most serious. It has been well known that many physiological processes are alterant in response to the environmental stress. With regard to the relationship between plant hormones and the regulation of chilling tolerance in rice seedlings, the major physiological roles of plant hormones: abscisic acid, ethylene and polyamines are evaluated and discussed in this paper. Rice seedlings were grown in culture solution to examine the effect of such plant hormones on physiological characters related to chilling tolerance and also to compare the different responses among tested cultivars. Intact seedlings about 14 day-old were chilled at conditions of 5$^{\circ}C$ and 80% relative humidity for various period. Cis-(＋)-ABA content was measured by the indirect ELISA technique. Polyamine content and ethylene production in leaves were determined by means of HPLC and GC respectively. Chilling damage of seedlings was evaluated by electrolyte leakage, TTC viability assay or servival test. Our experiment results described here demonstrated the physiological functions of ABA, ethylene, and polyamines related to the regulation of chilling tolerance in rice seedlings. Levels of cis-(＋)-ABA in leaves or xylem sap of rice seedlings increased rapidly in response to 5$^{\circ}C$ treatment. The tolerant cultivars had significant higher level of endogenous ABA than the sensitive ones. The ($\pm$)-ABA pretreatment for 48 h increased the chilling tolerance of the sensitive indica cultivar. One possible function of abscisic acid is the adjustment of plants to avoid chilling-induced water stress. Accumulation of proline and other compatible solutes is assumed to be another factor in the prevention of chilling injuies by abscisic acid. In addition, the expression of ABA-responsive gene is reported in some plants and may be involving in the acclimation to low temperature. Ethylene and its immediate precusor, 1-amincyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid(ACC) increased significantly after 5$^{\circ}C$ treatment. The activity of ACC synthase which converts S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) to ACC enhanced earlier than the increase of ethylene and ACC. Low temperature increased ACC synthase activity, whereas prolonged chilling treatment damaged the conversion of ACC to ethylene. It was shown that application of Ethphon was beneficial to recovering from chilling injury in rice seedlings. However, the physiological functions of chilling-induced ethylene are still unclear. Polyamines are thought to be a potential plant hormone and may be involving in the regulation of chilling response. Results indicated that chilling treatment induced a remarkable increase of polyamines, especially putrescine content in rice seedlings. The relative higher putrescine content was found in chilling-tolerant cultivar and the maximal level of enhanced putrescine in shoot of chilling cultivar(TNG. 67) was about 8 folds of controls at two days after chilling. The accumulation of polyamines may protect membrane structure or buffer ionic imbalance from chilling damage. Stress physiology is a rapidly expanding field. Plant growth regulators that improve tolerance to low temperature may affect stress protein production. The molecular or gene approaches will help us to elucidate the functions of plant hormones related to the regulation of chilling tolerance in plants in the near future.

• Horticultural Science & Technology
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.511-522
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• 2011

Flower color is one of the main target traits in the flower breeding. Recently, technological advances in genetic engineering have been successfully reported the flower colors, such as blue roses and blue carnations that are impossible to develop by traditional breeding. Accumulated knowledge-based approaches for flavonoid biosynthesis enabled to introduce novel and unique colors into flowers. These flower color modifications have been made through the regulation of flavonoid metabolic pathway - control of endogenous gene expression and introduction of foreign genes to produce novel and specific flavonoids - and the introduction of transcription factors that are known to regulate sets of genes being involving in the flavonoid biosynthetic pathway. More empirical regulation of the flavonoids metabolism requires the understanding for regulatory mechanism of intrinsic flavonoids depending on the flower crops and the very sophisticated control of flavonoid metabolic flow. In this review, we summarized successful examples of flower color modification. It might be useful to deduce the strategy for the creation of exquisite colors in flower plants.

• Herbal Formula Science
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.23-42
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• 2010

This report describes 90 prescriptions related to the use of Platycodi Radix main blended from Dongeuibogam. The following conclusions were reached through investigations on the prescriptions that use Platycodi Radix as a key component. Prescriptions that Platycodi Radix was taken as a monarch drug are utilized for 30 therapeutic purposes, for example, cough disease, throat disease, abscess and pus, and wind disease. In particular, 12.1% of prescriptions appear in the chapter of cough, and 9.9% of those appear in the chapter of throat, and each 8.8% of those appear in the chapter of abscess and of wind disease. Prescriptions that utilize Platycodi Radix as the main ingredient are used in the treatment of cough disease, throat disease and abscess, and they are also used for treating 74 different types of disease. The prescriptions are compounded with Platycodi Radix as a monarch drug are related to exogenous agents such as wind-cold pathogen, wind-heat pathogen, epidemic diseases, and endogenous agents such as seven emotions, and non-endo-exopathogenic factors like excessive labor, deficiency of Qi and blood, phlegm-mass, phlegm-fire, ect. The dosage of Platycodi Radix is 2pun(about 0.75g) to 1nyang(about 37.5g), however 1don (about 3.75g) has been taken the most for clinical application. We can find out that according to herbs or prescriptions blended with it self, Platycodi Radix makes a variety of functions to penetrate lung stagnancy and remove phlegm, relieve throat pain and get rid of pus, and regulate Qi flow. And Gamgiltang is the most useful base prescription which used the Platycodi Radix as the main component.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.5585-5593
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• 2014

This study tested the hypothesis that the significance of the heterogeneous dispersion parameter in safety performance function (SPF) used to estimate the expected crashes is affected by the endogenous heterogeneous prior distributions, and analyzed the impacts of the mis-specified dispersion parameter on the evaluation results for traffic safety countermeasures. In particular, this study simulated the Poisson means based on the heterogeneous dispersion parameters and estimated the SPFs using both the negative binomial (NB) model and the heterogeneous negative binomial (HNB) model for analyzing the impacts of the model mis-specification on the mean and dispersion functions in SPF. In addition, this study analyzed the characteristics of errors in the crash reduction factors (CRFs) obtained when the two models are used to estimate the posterior means and variances, which are essentially estimated through the estimated hyper-parameters in the heterogeneous prior distributions. The simulation study results showed that a mis-estimation on the heterogeneous dispersion parameters through the NB model does not affect the coefficient of the mean functions, but the variances of the prior distribution are seriously mis-estimated when the NB model is used to develop SPFs without considering the heterogeneity in dispersion. Consequently, when the NB model is used erroneously to estimate the prior distributions with heterogeneous dispersion parameters, the mis-estimated posterior mean can produce large errors in CRFs up to 120%.

• Journal of Pharmacopuncture
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.40-49
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• 2014

Objectives: The gastric ulcer is a common disorder of the stomach and duodenum. The basic physiopathology of a gastric ulcer results from an imbalance between some endogenous aggressive and cytoprotective factors. This study examined whether Ganoderma lucidum pharmacopuncture (GLP) would provide protection against acute gastric ulcers in rats. Methods: Sprague-Dawley rats were divided randomly into 4 groups of 8 rats each: normal, control, normal saline (NP) and GLP groups. The experimental acute gastric ulcer was induced by using an EtOH/HCl solution and the normal group received the same amount of normal saline instead of ethanol. The NP and the GLP groups were treated once with injections of saline and GLP, respectively. Two local acupoints were used: CV12 (中脘) which is the alarm point of the Stomach Meridian, and ST36 (足三里), which is the sea point of the Stomach Meridian. The stomachs from the rats in each group were collected and analyzed for gross appearance and histology. Also, immunohistochemistry staining for BAX, Bcl-2 and TGF-${\beta}1$ was performed. Results: Histological observations of the gastric lesions in the control group showed comparatively extensive damage of the gastric mucosa and necrotic lesions had penetrated deeply into the mucosa. The lesions were long, hemorrhagic, and confined to the glandular portions. The lesions were measured microscopically by using the clear depth of penetration into the gastric mucosal surface. The length and the width of the ulcer were measured and the inhibition percentage was calculated. Wound healing of the acute gastric ulcer was promoted by using GLP, and significant alterations of indices in gastric mucosa were observed. Such protection was shown by gross appearance, histology and immunohistochemistry staining for BAX, Bcl-2 and TGF-${\beta}1$. Conclusion: These results suggest that GLP administered at CV12 and ST36 can provide significant protection to the gastric mucosa against an ethanol-induced acute gastric ulcer.

• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.590-598
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• 2007

Syrup form medicines which children commonly take contains sugar as sweeteners. Sugar, low endogenous pH, high acidity, mucosity and low concentrations of ions including those of calcium, fluoride, and phosphate in their composition, they can be cause of caries and erosion. Not only the properties found in such medicines, but also other factors such as high frequency of ingestion, bedtime consumption, and the collateral effect of a reduction in salivary flow, poor oral hygiene of sick children may also contribute to the risk. The other side, parents rarely recognize these risk, and medical experts also easily overlook. The purpose of this study was to investigate the pH level of some syrup form medicines which are frequently administered by infants and young children, and their effects on the changes of plaque pH when rinsing with them. And we compared the salivary pH change induced by rinsing with Cough-syrup only and rinsing with Cough-syrup followed by water. The results were as follows : 1. The average pH of syrup form medicines which were prescribed in Pusan National University Hospital and several OTC syrup form medicines was pH $4.7{\pm}0.94$, within the range of pH 3.0 to 6.8. 2. The plaque pH decreased rapidly below pH 5.5 after rinsing with the syrup form medicines which were selected for the test and there was no statistically significant difference in the of plaque pH change between syrup form medicines except COLDI(p>0.05). 3. There was statistically significant difference in salivary pH change between rinsing with Coughsyrup only and rinsing with water after Cough-syrup(p<0.05).