• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
• /
• v.63 no.12
• /
• pp.477-482
• /
• 2020

The childhood obesity pandemic has emerged as an important public health problem in many countries. Obese children are likely to become obese adults, and adult obesity is associated with an increased risk of morbidity. Therefore, controlling the childhood obesity epidemic has become a top public health priority worldwide. The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic may significantly impede this important mission and constitute an unprecedented tragedy in the global battle against childhood obesity. This manuscript presents evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic will aggravate the childhood obesity epidemic and lead to significant weight gain in school children by creating an unprecedented obesogenic environment. Within the last few months, many countries took uncompromising measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including school closures and quarantine. While these steps are often necessary to ensure infection control, they may have a significant negative effect on children's mental and physical health. Physical, nutritional, and psychosocial factors that promote obesity in children during this special situation complementarily contribute to an unprecedented obesogenic environment. Large-scale quarantine and home confinement will impose new and unfamiliar stressors on children, thereby worsening the childhood obesity epidemic. Most importantly, adverse childhood events resulting from a predicted increase in domestic violence within the next few months will significantly contribute to this concern. The scenario presented in this review is of paramount public health importance and must be considered during future pandemic planning. Involved stakeholders, including governments, schools, and families, must make all possible efforts to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on childhood obesity.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
• /
• 2003.11a
• /
• pp.349-350
• /
• 2003

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
• /
• v.61 no.11
• /
• pp.366-370
• /
• 2018

Purpose: Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most important diseases that cause significant mortality and morbidity in young children. Data on TB transmission from an infected child are limited. Herein, we report a case of disseminated TB in a child and conducted a contact investigation among exposed individuals. Methods: A 4-year-old child without Bacille Calmette-$Gu{\acute{e}}rin$ vaccination was diagnosed as having culture-proven disseminated TB. The child initially presented with symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease, and nosocomial and kindergarten exposures were reported. The exposed individuals to the index case were divided into 3 groups, namely household, nosocomial, or kindergarten contacts. Evaluation was performed following the Korean guidelines for TB. Kindergarten contacts were further divided into close or casual contacts. Chest radiography and tuberculin skin test or interferon-gamma-releasing assay were performed for the contacts. Results: We examined 327 individuals (3 household, 10 nosocomial, and 314 kindergarten contacts), of whom 18 (5.5%), the brother of the index patient, and 17 kindergarten children were diagnosed as having latent TB infection (LTBI). LTBI diagnosis was more frequent in the children who had close kindergarten contact with the index case (17.1% vs. 4.4%, P=0.007). None of the cases had active TB. Conclusion: This is the first reported case of TB transmission among young children from a pediatric patient with disseminated TB in Korea. TB should be emphasized as a possible cause of chronic diarrhea and failure to thrive in children. A national TB control policy has been actively applied to identify Korean children with LTBI.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.271-280
• /
• 2014

Foot-and-mouth Disease (FMD) is a highly infectious and fatal viral livestock disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals domestic and wild and the FMD outbreak in Korea in 2010/2011 was a disastrous incident for the country and the economy. Thus, efforts at the national level are put to prevent foot-and-mouth disease and to reduce the damage in the case of outbreak. As one of these efforts, it is useful to study the spread of the disease by using probabilistic model. In fact, after the FMD epidemic in the UK occurred in 2001, many studies have been carried on the spread of the disease using a variety of stochastic models as an effort to prepare future outbreak of FMD. However, for the FMD outbreak in Korea occurred in 2010/2011, there are few study by utilizing probabilistic model. This paper assumes a stochastic spatial-temporal susceptible-infectious-removed (SIR) epidemic model for the 2010/2011 FMD outbreak to understand spread of the disease. Since data on infections of FMD disease during 2010/2011 outbreak of Aniaml and Plant Quarantine Agency and on the livestock farms from the nationwide census in 2011 of Statistics Korea do not have detail informations on address or missing values, we generate detail information on address by randomly allocating farms within corresponding Si/Gun area. The kernel function is estimated using the infection data and by using simulations, the susceptibility and transmission of the spatial-temporal stochastic SIR models are determined.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Service
• /
• v.44 no.4
• /
• pp.291-297
• /
• 2021

Severe outbreaks of porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus (PEDV) have continued to re-emerge worldwide. Because of the high mortality rate of suckling piglets in PEDV outbreaks, the disease causes significant economic losses in the pig industry. The limited pre-existing immunity against this virus is thought to cause an explosive increase in infection in pig farms. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical symptoms of PEDV after intentional exposure (feedback). During the first few days of the outbreak in a breeding pig farm, 14 sows showed watery diarrhoea, and the disease subsequently spread rapidly throughout the barn. Pigs that were intentionally exposed to PEDV (n=251) showed watery diarrhoea (46.6%), reduced appetite (17.5%), and vomiting (6.0%). However, 75 exposed pigs (29.9%) showed no clinical signs of disease. Four weeks after the feedback challenge, 34 sows gave birth to litters of piglets, which survived with no diarrhoea. Five weeks after the start of the outbreak, PEDV was not detected in any of the examined samples, including environmental swabs. Thus, early diagnosis, prompt establishment of herd immunity, and strict application of biosecurity are good practices to reduce the mortality rates among new-born piglets and control economic losses in pig farms showing PEDV outbreaks.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.73-85
• /
• 1971

A epidemiological study was conducted by author on 925 official reported patients with the first grade legal communicable disease during the period from January 1969 to December 1970 in all area of Kangwon province. As the results of this study, tile following conclusion were obtained. A) Typhoid fever 1. Of all 925 patients surveyed, typhoid fever showed the highest rate as 50.7 percent. 2. Age group from 10 to 14 years old showed the highest rates 3. High epidemic period was from June to September. 4. As for the occupational distribution, unemployed showed the highest rate as 63.2 percent, followed by-21.1 percent in farmer and 9.4 percent in student. 5. Most of all patients(93.7%) were isolated in their own house 6. The morbidity rate was 16.0 per 100, 000 population and case fatality rate was 1.76 percent 7. The mean of the duration from onset to diagnosis and carnation were 11.7$\pm$7.1 days and 25.1$\pm$13, 8 days respectively. 8. Main diagnostic method was almost the clinical examination B) Dysentery 1, Of all 925 patients surveyed, dysentery showed 44.4 percent 2. Age group from 0 to 9 years old showed the highest rate 3. High epidemic period of this disease was from April to August 4. As for the occupational distribution, unemployed showed the highest rate as 73.9 percent, followed by 17.7 person in farmers and 7.0 percent in student 5. the attack rate of agricultural area was higher than of fishing area 6. The mean of the duration from onset to diagnosis and crating duration were 10.4$\pm$4.3 days and 15.7$\pm$8.8 days respectively. 7. The morbidity rate and case fatality rate were 21.8 per 100.000 population and 1.46 percent, respectively. 8. Most of all patients were isolated in own house 9. Most of all patients (97.6%) were diagnosed by the clinical examination C) Diphtheria 1. As for the age distribution, 0-4 years old group showed the highest rate as 44.4 percent followed by 27.7 percent in 5-9 years old group and 22.2 percent in 10-14 years old group 3. Epidemic season was almost in autumn, winter and spring 3. The morbidity rate was 0.96 per 100.000 population and case fatality rate was high as 26.6 percent 4. 66.6 percent of this disease was isolated in their own house and the others were admitted in hospital D) Paratyphoid fever 1. Most of all patients were attacked below 20 years old 2. Epidemic season was almost was almost in late summer 3. The morbidity rate was 0.53 per 100.000 population 4. The mean of the duration from onset to diagnosis and crating duration were 18.3$\pm$1.3 day and 13.7$\pm$0.2 day. respectively.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.338-346
• /
• 2018

Two molecular epidemiologic methods, IS6110 restriction fragment length polymorphism (IS6110-RFLP) and 24-locus mycobacterial interspersed repetitive unit-variable-number tandem repeat (MIRU-VNTR), are used worldwide in studies of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB). Conversely, because of its poor resolution, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) is not widely used for MTB. In this study, we improved the 24-locus MIRU-VNTR and PFGE protocols and compared the effectiveness of these approaches for the molecular typing of MTB using 75 clinical isolates obtained from a cohort investigation of high-risk populations infected with MTB. The 24-locus MIRU-VNTR method demonstrated superior discriminatory ability, followed by PFGE and IS6110-RFLP. Next, we analyzed six isolates with clear epidemiologic connections; that is, isolates from patients who attended the same school. IS6110-RFLP and PFGE identified these samples as the same type. By contrast, according to MIRU-VNTR, two isolates differed from four other isolates at one locus each; one isolate was identified as Mtub29 and the other as QUB-26. In summary, the 24-locus MIRU-VNTR assay was the most useful molecular typing method among the three methods investigated due to its discriminatory power, short time required, and availability as an epidemiologic investigation tool. PFGE was the second-best method. Compared with the other loci assessed in the 24-locus MIRU-VNTR assay, the Mtub29 and QUB-26 loci appeared to exhibit greater variability during transmission.

• Childhood Kidney Diseases
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.211-216
• /
• 2003

An epidemic outbreak of food poisoning due to enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli(EHEC) occurred throughout Korea from May to September, 2003. Patients infected via contaminated school lunch foods were found mainly in Seoul and Gyeonggi province. As a result of this food poisoning, 36 patients were diagnosed as hemolytic uremic syndrome(HUS) up to mid-September, 2003 and five of them visited our hospital. Before the outbreak this year, we had experienced only 23 cases of HUS, including diarrhea associated (D+) and atypical (D-) forms, for the last 14 years, and there had been no case with pancreatic enzyme elevation. Unlike the past HUS cases, those of this year presented with severe abdominal pain and spiking elevation of pancreatic enzyme levels in 2 cases. We report 2 cases of transient pancreatitis combined with HUS in children during the epidemic outbreak in 2003 with a brief review of related literatures.

• Journal of Korean Medical classics
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.23-48
• /
• 2010

Onbyeong(溫病) is called an acute epidemic febrile disease caused by warm pathogen, a major symptom of Onbyeong is high fever. Doctrine of Onbyeong is a study of an occurrence, progress and treatments of an acute epidemic febrile disease. Doctrine of Onbyeong is valid in the Cheong Dynasty at China. Now, a theory of doctrine of Onbyeong at China and Korea is being applied in not only an acute febrile disease but also many other lifestyle diseases. Onbyeongjobyeon is a book written by Oguktong(吳鞠通). Oguktong was influenced by Jangjung-gyeong(張仲景) "Sanghanron(傷寒論)". Oguktong had organized Seopcheonsa(葉天士)'s medical thoughts and Oguktong's medical experiences. A Samcho(三焦) deteriorated case is divided into three groups - Upper, Middle and Lower-energizer - that is discussed of a vertical progress of Onbyeong. And a Wigiyeonghyeol(衛氣營血) deteriorated case is divided into four groups - Wi, Gi, Yeong and Hyeol - that is discussed of a horizontal progress of Onbyeong. In Korean medicine, there are four types of diagnosis which are watching, listening, asking and taking. Informations, got by four types diagnosis are synthesized and classified for medical treatments. A pulse diagnosis belongs to a method by taking a wrist among four diagnosis. A Korean Medicine doctor makes a conclusion of cause, region and condition of disease by taking a pulse. Because all organs in human body are connected by a meridian system. organs conditions are reflected in a meridian system. So by taking a pulse, a progress and a prognosis of disease is diagnosed In this thesis, by taking a pulse on "Onbyeongjobyeon(溫病條辨)", a location and a feature of disease's cause with weakness and strength of a vital force are examined, and a character of a pulse diagnosis of Onbyeong is examined.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.464-472
• /
• 2012

To assess the space-time clustering of FMD(Foot-and-Mouth Disease) epidemic occurred in Korea between November 2010 to April 2011, geographical information system (GIS)-based spatial analysis technique was used. Farm address and geographic data obtained from a commercial portal site were integrated into GIS software, which we used to map out the color-shading geographic features of the outbreaks through a process called thematic mapping, and to produce a visual representation of the relationship between epidemic course and time throughout the country. FMD cases reported in northern area of Gyounggi province were clustered in space and time within small geographic areas due to the environmental characteristics which livestock population density is high enough to ease transmit FMD virus to the neighboring farm, whereas FMD cases were clustered in space but not in time for southern and eastern area of Gyounggi province. When analyzing the data for 7-day interval, the mean radius of the spatial-time clustering was 25km with minimum 5.4km and maximum 74km. In addition, the radius of clustering was relatively small in the early stage of FMD epidemic, but the size was geographically expanded over the epidemic course. Prior to implementing control measures during the outbreak period, assessment of geographic units potentially affected and identification of risky areas which are subsequently be targeted for specific intervention measures is recommended.