• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.14-15
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• 2023

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.36.1-36.12
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• 2022

Dexamethasone (DEX) was the first drug shown to save lives of critically ill coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients suffering from respiratory distress. A hyperactivated state of neutrophils was found in COVID-19 patients compared to non-COVID pneumonia cases. Given the beneficial effects of DEX in COVID-19 patients, we investigated the effects of DEX and of other immunomodulatory drugs vitamin D3 (VD3) and retinoic acid (RA) on neutrophil function. DEX, but not VD3 or RA, significantly inhibited all tested aspects of neutrophil function, e.g., degranulation, intracellular ROS production, CXCL8 release and NETosis. Interestingly, RA displayed the opposite effect by significantly increasing both CXCL8 and NET release by neutrophils. Taken together, these data suggest that the lower COVID-19 mortality in DEX-treated patients may in part be due to the dampening effect of DEX on the inflammatory neutrophil response, which could prevent neutrophil plugs with NETS in the lungs and other inflamed organs of patients.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.2018-2043
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• 2022

Nowadays, COVID-19 infections are influencing our daily lives which have spread globally. The major symptoms' of COVID-19 are dry cough, sore throat, and fever which in turn to critical complications like multi organs failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome, etc. Therefore, to hinder the spread of COVID-19, a Computerized Doughty Predictor Framework (CDPF) is developed to yield benefits in monitoring the progression of disease from Chest CT images which will reduce the mortality rates significantly. The proposed framework CDPF employs Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) as a feature extractor to extract the features from CT images. Subsequently, the extracted features are fed into the Adaptive Dragonfly Algorithm (ADA) to extract the most significant features which will smoothly drive the diagnosing of the COVID and Non-COVID cases with the support of Doughty Learners (DL). This paper uses the publicly available SARS-CoV-2 and Github COVID CT dataset which contains 2482 and 812 CT images with two class labels COVID⁺ and COVI^-. The performance of CDPF is evaluated against existing state of art approaches, which shows the superiority of CDPF with the diagnosis accuracy of about 99.76%.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.86 no.2
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• pp.102-110
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• 2023

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a major health burden worldwide, with over 600 million confirmed cases and 6 million deaths by 15 December 2022. Although the acute phase of COVID-19 management has been established, the long-term clinical course and complications due to the relatively short outbreak is yet to be assessed. The current COVID-19 pandemic is causing significant morbidity and mortality around the world. Interestingly, epidemiological studies have shown that fatality rates vary considerably across different countries, and men and elderly patients are at higher risk of developing severe diseases. There is increasing evidence that COVID-19 infection causes neurological deficits in a substantial proportion to patients suffering from acute respiratory distress syndrome. Furthermore, lack of physical activity and smoking are associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) susceptibility. We should therefore explore why lack of physical activity, smoking, etc causing a population more susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and mechanism involved. Thus, in this review article, we summarize epidemiological evidence related to risk factors and lifestyle that affect COVID-19 severity and the mechanism involved. These risk factors or lifestyle interventions include smoking, cardiovascular health, obesity, exercise, environmental pollution, psychosocial social stress, and diet.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.374-383
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• 2021

Background: The purpose of this study is to identify the factors affecting the depressive mood experience in university students by gender. Methods: This study is a descriptive survey that conducted a secondary analysis using data from the 2020 Community Health Survey, which is conducted annually in Korea. The study targets 8,928 college students, 4,682 male students and 4,246 female students. Data analysis was conducted after creating a composite sample plan file that reflected layering variables, colony variables, and weights. Results: Factors affecting the depressive mood experience of both males and females were household income, smoking, subjective stress levels, changes in drinking and smoking, and the number of encounters caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Factors influencing the depressive mood experience of females were the presence of breakfast, changes in physical activity due to COVID-19, and the presence of helpers in self-quarantine due to COVID-19 (p<0.05). Conclusion: Psychological counseling programs should be promoted to actively utilize mental health in those in their 20s and 30s. Universities also need to detect depressed students early through screening and perform timely and appropriate interventions.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.689-702
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• 2021

Purpose: This study aimed to develop a situation-specific theory to explain nurses' experiences of the COVID-19 crisis. Methods: The participants were 16 hospital nurses who experienced the COVID-19 crisis. Data were collected through in-depth individual interviews from September 2, 2020 to January 20, 2021. Transcribed interview contents were analyzed using Corbin and Strauss's grounded theory method. Results: A total of 38 concepts and 13 categories were identified through an open coding process. The core category found was becoming a pioneering nurse who turns crises into opportunities. The causal conditions were the chaos of being exposed defenselessly to an unexpected pandemic, fear caused by a nursing care field reminiscent of a battlefield, and moral distress from failing to protect patients' human dignity. The contextual conditions were feeling like the scapegoat of the hospital organization, increasing uncertainty due to the unpredictable state of COVID-19, and relative deprivation due to inappropriate treatment. The central phenomenon was suffering alone while experiencing the dedication of the COVID-19 hero image. The action/interactional strategy were efforts to find a breakthrough and getting the nurse's mind right, and the intervening conditions were gratitude for those who care for broken hearts and getting used to myself with repetitive work. The Consequences were becoming an independent nurse and frustration with the unchanging reality. Conclusion: This study provides the foundation for the nurse's situation-specific theory of the COVID-19 crisis by defining the crisis perceived by nurses who cared for COVID-19 patients and suggesting types of coping with the crisis.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.79-88
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• 2022

The objective of this study was to assess the association of changes in behaviors and depressed mood during the COVID-19 pandemic in Korea. A cross-sectional internet-based survey was conducted, using proportional samples of Korean adults and a logistic regression model was used to assess the association. As a result, negative changes of daily sitting or lying down time, daily walking time, smoking, and alcohol consumption were associated with being more depressed during the COVID-19 pandemic [odds ratios (ORs): 2.23 (95% CI=1.77-2.81), 2.04 (95% CI=1.63-2.56), 2.84 (95% CI=1.51-5.36), and 1.82 (95% CI=1.26-2.63), respectively]. This indicates that strategies to promote positive health behaviors change (increased activities and decreased consumption of smoking and alcohol) could help address psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.467-475
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• 2023

Background: To mitigate the spread of Covid-19, nurses infected with the virus were required to isolate themselves from their families and community. Isolated patients were reported to have experienced mental distress, posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, and suicide. Though studies have reported the psychological impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, less is known about the lived experiences of nurses who survived Covid-19 infection in sub-Saharan Africa. Methods: A descriptive phenomenological approach was used to study the lived experiences of registered nurses who survived Covid-19 disease. In-depth interviews were conducted among nurses diagnosed with Covid-19 from two hospitals in Kenya between March and May, 2021. Purposive and snowball sampling were used to recruit registered nurses. Data were analyzed using Giorgi's steps of analysis. Results: The study included ten nurses between 29 and 45 years of age. Nurses' experiences encompassed three themes: diagnosis reaction, consequences, and coping. Reactions to the diagnosis included fear, anxiety, and sadness. The consequence of the diagnosis and isolation was stigma, isolation, and loneliness. Nurses coping mechanisms included acceptance, creating routines, support, and spirituality. Conclusion: Our findings aid in understanding how nurses experienced Covid-19 infection as patients and will provide evidence-based content for supporting nurses in future pandemics. Moreover, as we acknowledge the heroic contribution of frontline healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is prudent to recognize the considerable occupational risk as they balance their duty to care, and the risk of infection to themselves and their families.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.55-71
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• 2021

Technostress management is increasingly getting important as ICT advances and infiltrates every job and task. Especially with the advent of COVID-19, workers had to switch to teleworking utilizing ICT extensively. In this study, we developed a research model explaining antecedents and their impacts on technostress in telecommuting context, especially under the COVID-19 situation. The result revealed that techno-complexity, techno-invasion, and techno-overload are the dominant factors that affect the negative psychological responses in the COVID-19 situation. Among them, we found that techno-overload maintain the most significant influence. It is due to the lack of instant feedback on workload allocations in telework and the lack of adjustment period with the sudden shift to telecommuting. In the case of techno-complexity, employees seem to experience difficulty acquiring new technical skills. Finally, the techno-invasion came out significant, signifying the infiltration of working space by home-related activities. The emotion-focused coping strategy had a moderating effect. In contrast, the problem-focused coping strategy had no significant effect, indicating that an appropriate emotional coping strategy is more important for workers undergoing extreme changes in the work environment. Subsequently, practical and theoretical implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.84 no.2
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• pp.125-133
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• 2021

Background: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) can manifest in a range of symptoms, including both asymptomatic systems which appear nearly non-existent to the patient, all the way to the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Specifically, COVID-19-associated pneumonia develops into ARDS due to the rapid progression of hypoxia, and although arterial blood gas analysis can assist in halting this deterioration, the current environment provided by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to an overall lack of medical resources or equipment, has made it difficult to administer such tests in a widespread manner. As a result, this study was conducted in order to determine whether the levels of oxygen saturation (SpO₂) and the fraction of inhaled oxygen (FiO₂) (SF ratio) can also serve as predictors of ARDS and the patient's risk of mortality. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study conducted from February 2020 to Mary 2020, with the study's subjects consisting of COVID-19 pneumonia patients who had reached a state of deterioration that required the use of oxygen therapy. Of the 100 COVID-19 pneumonia cases, we compared 59 pneumonia patients who required oxygen therapy, divided into ARDS and non-ARDS pneumonia patients who required oxygen, and then investigated the different factors which affected their mortality. Results: At the time of admission, the ratios of SpO₂, FiO₂, and SF for the ARDS group differed significantly from those of the non-ARDS pneumonia support group who required oxygen (p<0.001). With respect to the predicting of the occurrence of ARDS, the SF ratio on admission and the SF ratio at exacerbation had an area under the curve which measured to be around 85.7% and 88.8% (p<0.001). Multivariate Cox regression analysis identified that the SF ratio at exacerbation (hazard ratio [HR], 0.916; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.846-0.991; p=0.029) and National Early Warning Score (NEWS) (HR, 1.277; 95% CI, 1.010-1.615; p=0.041) were significant predictors of mortality. Conclusion: The SF ratio on admission and the SF ratio at exacerbation were strong predictors of the occurrence of ARDS, and the SF ratio at exacerbation and NEWS held a significant effect on mortality.