• The Journal of Pediatrics of Korean Medicine
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.26-36
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• 2020

Objectives The purpose of this study is to assess the reporting quality and methodological quality of systematic reviews from the Journal of Pediatrics of Korean Medicine. Methods Systematic reviews were selected from the Journal of Pediatrics of Korean Medicine (JPKM) by utilizing Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated System (OASIS) and JPKM homepage. Two independent researchers assessed the reporting quality through Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guideline checklist, and assessed the methodological quality of systematic review through Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) 2 tool checklist. Results Four systematic reviews were finally selected for the assessment. When assessed by PRISMA, three literatures were little insufficient, and one literature was sufficient. When assessed by AMSTAR 2, three literatures were moderate quality, and one literature was critically low quality. Also, all of the reviews had no information about 'Protocol and registration', 'publication bias', and 'conflicts of interest'. Conclusions Systematic review is important for Journal of Pediatrics of Korean Medicine and Korean Medicine Society. Efforts are needed to improve the reporting and methodological quality of the systematic reviews through PRISMA and AMSTAR 2.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.559-566
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• 2022

Introduction: The aim of this systematic review is to provide evidence confirming the efficacy and safety of herbal medicines used in the treatment of liver cancer. Methods: The review will include randomized clinical trials that compared herbal medicines used as treatments for liver cancer with other therapies, such as placebos and Western medicine. Only randomized controlled trials will be included in this review, and all types of herbal medicine will be evaluated. Eleven electronic databases will be searched from the inception date: the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, MEDLINE, EMBASE, AMED, CINAHL, one Chinese database (CNKI), and five Korean databases (OASIS, DBpia, RISS, KISS, and NDSL). The selection of studies, data extraction, and management will be performed independently by four researchers. Methodological quality, including the risk of bias, will be assessed using the Cochrane risk-of-bias assessment tool. Results: The review of current evidence for the effectiveness of herbal medicine for liver cancer will be summarized and quantitatively analyzed. Conclusions: Our systematic review will provide evidence of the efficacy of herbal medicines as treatments for liver cancer. This evidence will provide useful information for practitioners and patients in the fields of oncology and complementary medicine.

• Journal of Dental Anesthesia and Pain Medicine
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.413-429
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• 2021

Background: Migraine headaches are the second leading cause of disability worldwide and are responsible for significant morbidity, reduction in the quality of life, and loss of productivity on a global scale. The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to evaluate the efficacy of ketamine on migraines and other primary headache disorders compared to placebo and other active interventions, such as midazolam, metoclopramide/diphenhydramine, and prochlorperazine/diphenhydramine. Methods: An electronic search of databases published up to February 2021, including Medline via PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library, a hand search of the bibliographies of the included studies, as well as literature and systematic reviews found through the search was conducted to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) investigating ketamine in the treatment of migraine/headache disorders compared to the placebo. The authors assessed the risk of bias according to the Cochrane Handbook guidelines. Results: The initial search strategy yielded 398 unduplicated references, which were independently assessed by three review authors. After evaluation, this number was reduced to five RCTs (two unclear risk of bias and three high risk of bias). The total number of patients in all the studies was 193. Due to the high risk of bias, small sample size, heterogeneity of the outcomes reported, and heterogeneity of the comparison groups, the quality of the evidence was very low. One RCT reported that intranasal ketamine was superior to intranasal midazolam in improving the aura attack severity, but not duration, while another reported that intranasal ketamine was not superior to metoclopramide and diphenhydramine in reducing the headache severity. In one trial, subcutaneous ketamine was superior to saline in migraine severity reduction; however, intravenous (I.V.) ketamine was inferior to I.V. prochlorperazine and diphenhydramine in another study. Conclusion: Further double-blind controlled studies are needed to assess the efficacy of ketamine in treating acute and chronic refractory migraines and other primary headaches using intranasal and subcutaneous routes. These studies should include a long-term follow-up and different ketamine dosages in diagnosed patients following international standards for diagnosing headache/migraine.

• Journal of Dental Anesthesia and Pain Medicine
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.205-221
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• 2018

This systematic review aimed to analyze the efficacy of corticosteroid premedication compared to placebo or no treatment to reduce postoperative pain in endodontic patients. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assessing corticosteroids via oral, intramuscular, subperiosteal, intraligamentary or intracanal route compared to passive or active placebo, or no treatment were included. Four databases were searched: PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and Embase up to 2/21/2018. Risk of bias was assessed with Cochrane Risk of bias tool. Fourteen RCTs with 1,462 generally healthy adults in need of endodontic treatment were included. 50% of the studies were at unclear risk and 50% at high risk of bias. Meta-analysis showed Visual Analog Scale (VAS) pain at 4-6 hours after Inferior Alveolar Nerve Block (IANB) was significantly lower by 21 points (0-100 scale) in the corticosteroid group compared to the control group (95% CI -35 to -7; P = 0.003), however this difference was not statistically significant after 24 hours (P = 0.116). The route of administration was oral and intraligament injection. Patients who received corticosteroids prior to IANB were 70.7% more likely to have none or mild pain 4-8 hours after treatment (P = 0.001) and 13.5% more likely 24 hours after IANB (P = 0.013) than patients in the control group. In conclusion, corticosteroid administration (oral or intraligamental) may clinically reduce the level of postoperative pain at 4-8 hours after IANB, however the quality of the evidence was low/moderate due to risk of bias and heterogeneity. Further studies are recommended.

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.159-165
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• 2018

Objectives : This study was performed to review the efficacy of national and international randomized controlled trials (RCTs) investigating evidence on thread embedding therapy for knee osteoarthritis. Methods : Online databases (PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane, NDSL, OASIS, CNKI) were searched for studies where thread embedding therapy was performed for Knee Osteoarthritis from their inception to July 2018. Two researchers independently performed the search. Only RCTs were selected. Eligible studies were selected first by the abstract and the title and then included after full-texts were read. Risk of bias of the included studies were evaluated using the Cochrane risk of bias assessment tool. Data were narratively summarized. Results : There were 334 studies retrieved from the databases, resulting in analysis of 3 RCTs. There was an average of 1.5 treatment visits over a 7 day period and evaluation tool used was efficacy rate, with traditional acupuncture being the most common control used in the trials. Statistically significant improvement by thread embedding therapy was reported. None of the included RCTs reported on adverse reactions. The risk of bias of the included studies was generally unclear. Conclusion : The review suggests that thread embedding therapy can be effective in knee osteoarthritis. But there was a lack of detailed information about the treatment procedures, and the risk of bias was unclear. Therefore, there is insufficient evidence for thread embedding therapy for knee osteoarthritis.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.382-385
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• 2021

Electrical poling is a crucial step to convert ferroelectrics to piezoelectrics. Nevertheless, no systematic investigation on the effect of poling has been reported. Given that the poling involves an alignment of spontaneous polarization, the condition for poling should be different when a material has an internal bias field that influences the domain stability. Here, we present the effect of poling profile on the dielectric and piezoelectric properties in Mn-doped Pb(Mg_1/3Nb_2/3)O₃-29 mol%PbTiO₃ single crystal with an internal bias field. We showed that both the dielectric permittivity and the piezoelectric coefficient were further enhanced when the poling procedure ends with a field application along the opposite direction to the internal bias field. We expect that the current finding would give a clue to understanding the true mechanism for the electrical poling.

• Atmosphere
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.527-538
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• 2013

In this study, climate over Korea based on the Historical scenario induced by HadGEM2-AO is simulated by WRF. For this purpose, a system that can be used be for numerical integration over the Far East Asian area of the center of the Korean Peninsula with 12.5 km-horizontal resolution was set-up at "Haebit", the early portion of KMA Supercomputer Unit-3. Using the system, the downscaling experiments were conducted for the period 1979-2010. The simulated results of HadGEM2-AO and WRF are presented in terms of 2 m-temperature and precipitation during boreal summer and winter of Historical for the period 1981~2005, compared with observation. As for the mean 2 m-temperature, the general patterns of HadGEM2-AO and WRF are similar with observation although WRF showed lower values than observation due to the systematic bias. WRF reproduced a feature of the terrain-following characteristics reasonably well owing to the increased horizontal resolution. Both of the models simulated the observed precipitation pattern for DJF than JJA reasonably, while the rainfall over the Korean Peninsula in JJA is less than observation. HadGEM2-AO in DJF 2 m-temperature and JJA precipitation has warm and dry biases over the Korean Peninsula, respectively. WRF showed cold bias over JJA 2 m-temperature and wet bias over DJF precipitation. The larger bias in WRF was attributed to the addition of HadGEM2-AO's bias to WRF's systematic bias. Spatial correlation analysis revealed that HadGEM2-AO and WRF had above 0.8 correlation coefficients except for JJA precipitation. In the EOF analysis, both models results explained basically same phase changes and variation as observation. Despite the difference in mean and bias fields for both models, the variabilities of the two models were almost similar with observation in many respects, implying that the downscaled results can be effectively used for the study of regional climate around the Korean Peninsula.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.294-297
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• 2004

Mean squared error (MSE) is an effective criterion to combine the mean and the standard deviation responses in dual response surface optimization. The bias and variance components of MSE need to be weighted properly in the given problem situation. This paper proposes a systematic method to determine the relative weights of bias and variance in accordance with a decision maker's prior and posterior preference structure.

• The Journal of the Korean dental association
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• v.45 no.3 s.454
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• pp.169-181
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• 2007

In this second part of series report on evidence-based dentistry, the level of evidence and the methods for critical appraisal are discussed. The epidemiologic studies, namely clinical studies have some bias per se, and the degree of bias is somewhat predetermined by the study design. The level of evidence can be defined as the reliability of the clinical study and it is dependent on the degree of bias. Thus, it is important to determine the type of the study and to understand its structure before critically appraising them. Systematic reviews of primary studies, randomized controlled trials, nonrandomized clinical trials, cohort studies, case-control studies, and case reports / series constitute the clinical studies and the level of evidence follows the order of the studies listed above. Critical appraisal is the most important procedure in evidence-based dentistry. It is done to determine the credibility of research papers and their usefulness in the clinician s own practice. Critical appraisal is consisted of multiple questions that are helpful for evaluating validity and usefulness of the studies concerning therapy, diagnosis, prognosis, and causation.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.38-47
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• 2017

Research into new methods for identifying highly expressed genes in anonymous genome sequences has been going on for more than 15 years. We presented here an alternative approach based on modified score of relative codon usage bias to identify highly expressed genes in crenarchaeal genomes. The proposed algorithm relies exclusively on sequence features for identifying the highly expressed genes. In this study, a comparative analysis of predicted highly expressed genes in five crenarchaeal genomes was performed using the score of Modified Relative Codon Bias Strength (MRCBS) as a numerical estimator of gene expression level. We found a systematic strong correlation between Codon Adaptation Index and MRCBS. Additionally, MRCBS correlated well with other expression measures. Our study indicates that MRCBS can consistently capture the highly expressed genes.