• Journal of Life Science
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.490-497
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• 2023

Pregnant women may need to take medications to treat preexisting diseases or diseases that develop during pregnancy. However, some drugs may be fetotoxic and lead to, for example, teratogenicity and growth retardation. Predicting the fetotoxicity of drugs is thus important for the health of the mother and fetus. The fetotoxicity of many drugs has not been established because various challenges hinder the ability of researchers to determine their fetotoxicity. The need exists for in silico-based fetotoxicity assessment models, as they can modernize the testing paradigm, improve predictability, and reduce the use of animals and the costs of fetotoxicity testing. In this study, we collected data on the fetotoxicity of drugs and constructed fetotoxicity prediction models based on various machine learning algorithms. We optimized the models for more precise predictions by tuning the hyperparameters. We then performed quantitative performance evaluations. The results indicated that the constructed machine learning-based models had high performance (AUROC >0.85, AUPR >0.9) in fetotoxicity prediction. We also analyzed the feature importance of our model's predictions, which could be leveraged to identify the specific features of drugs that are strongly associated with fetotoxicity. The proposed model can be used to prescreen drugs and drug candidates at a lower cost and in less time. It provides a predictive score for fetotoxicity risk, which may be beneficial in the design of studies on fetotoxicity in human pregnancy.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.41-53
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• 2008

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is defined as glucose intolerance discovered or onset during pregnancy and attention is needed because of increased risk of perinatal morbidties and higher incidence of diabetes afterward. This study was performed to identify dietary factors associated with the development of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). Developed food frequency questionnaire containing 192 food items were used to assess nutritional status of 246 control subjects and 104 GDM subjects. Food habits of subjects were examined in the questionnaire. The more irregularity and less variety of meal were found in GDM group compared to control group and GDM group tended to eat rapidly and do not like vegetables and greasy foods. Total score of food habits in GDM was lower than control group, which suggests that GDM group have undesirable food habits. Mean daily energy and carbohydrate intakes of GDM group were higher than those of control group, and percent energy from protein was significantly higher in control. Nutrient density of protein, calcium, phosphorus and vitamin BI of GDM group was significantly lower than those of control group. Therefore dietary quality of GDM group was lower than that of control group. Odds ratio for GDM was high when energy and carbohydrate intakes were high. And when the intakes of rice, noodle, shiruduk, hamburger, boiled egg, steamed pork shank were high, the odds ratio for GDM was high. These results indicate that the amount and frequencies of several foods and dish items were related with the occurrence of GDM subjects. On the whole, GDM subjects consumed more cereals and less vegetables and less legumes. From these results, pregnant women with GDM tended to have unhealthy food habits, and carbohydrate intake was important dietary factors on the onset of GDM.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.93-122
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• 1996

This is a study of the determinants of sexual, contraceptive, and abortion behavior among unmarried female adolescents and young adults, which has emerged as a growing and serious health problem in Korea. As part of a larger project, data were gathered in three export zones: Kuro (Seoul), Kumi (Kyngbuk) Masan Changwon (Kyongnam) ; and the study samples are regrouped into three categories: 1) factory workers, i.e. , the reference group serving as program participants, 2) entertainment workers, and 3) ob-gyn patients. This study indicates that entertainment workers are at highest risk of experiencing premarital sex, STDs, contraceptive failure, unwanted pregnancies, and induced abortion. Of them, 20 percent had STDs as a result of first sexual experience: and about seven tenths had two or more pregnancies due to the adoption of low-efficacy methods. The proportion of those who had ever been pregnant was 60 percent for the group as a whole: 36 percent for the program participants: 64 percent for the entertainment workers ; and 91 percent four the ob-gyn patients. These proportions are exactly the same for abortion in each group, which means that all pregnancies ended in induced abortion. Of the respondents who said that they were sexually active at the time of survey, abortions were very high: 1.6 for the program participants, 2.3 for the entertainment workers, and 1.9 for the ob-gyn patients. About 80 percent of the women had abortions during the first trimester, and two thirds of the first abortions took place between the ages of 20 and 23. About one fourth experienced post-abortion complication, which was highest among the program participants (39 percent). Sixty percent of those with complications visited a hospital or took medicine to treat the problem. Even after the experience of induced abortion, the use of contraception was very low, except among the entertainment workers, whose level of use reached 53 percent. The most obvious recommendation, arising from this research, is that 'good-quality' counselling and family planning services be established under the auspices of both national and local government, particularly targeted for the entertainment workers as well as the factory workers in various textile, electronic, manufacturing, and other industrial sectors. We believe that entertainment sectors should be restructured radically so that young women who work for amusement bars and other entertainment sectors obtain protection from the risk of having unwanted pregnancies, STDs, and induced abortion.