• Korean journal of aerospace and environmental medicine
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.75-79
• /
• 2020

This study focuses on the comparative and quantitative analysis of the epidemiologic trends and aspects of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) outbreaks between Korea and Japan from 2013 to 2017. The following factors were analyzed; cumulative incidence rate (CIR), cases-fatality rate (CFR), and the epidemic aspects, including cases related to gender, male-to-female morbidity ratio (MFMR), age, seasonal, and geographical distributions. We observed 607 SFTS cases with CIR in Korea during the period 2013 to 2017 were as 0.24 per 100,000 populations and with a 127 fatal-cases (F.C.s), corresponding to a CFR of 20.9%, respectively. During the same period in Japan, 319 SFTS cases with a CIR of 0.05 and with 60 F.C.s to a CFR of 18.8% observed. When compared, the CIR of SFTS in Korea was significantly higher than in Japan (P<0.01), but there were no significant differences levels of the CFR and MFMR between Korea and Japan. Also, a higher incidence of SFTS was observed in people aged over 50-years or elders in Korea and those of 60-years or elders in Japan (P<0.01). The seasonal distribution of SFTS outbreak cases showed that the incidence in summer through autumn in Korea (92.4% of total cases) was higher than in Japan (65.2%), while the outbreaks of SFTS in spring was much higher in Japan (31.0%) than in Korea (7.4%), (P<0.01). The regional distribution revealed no significant difference between the eastern area (44.8%) and the western area (46.8%) of the Korean peninsula except Jeju-island (8.4%). However, in Japan, the incidence only occurred in Chubu-Kinki-Chugoku (30.3%), Shikoku (25.7%), Kyushu (42.6%) and Okinawa (0.3%), which are the western and southern areas of Japan. These differences in SFTS occurrence may reflect the influences of vector/hosts, climate, and geographical and cultural characteristics between the two countries.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.311-343
• /
• 2004

Various aspect of epidemics broke out continually from the middle of Joseon Dynasty due to the famine and drought caused by abnormal climate of the sixteenth century and the war. Thus the Dynasty performed sacrificial rites, isolated the patients and published plenty of medical books related epidemics in order to cure of the patients, and Heojun edited 『Byeokyeoksinbang』 as 'Dangdokyeok' broke out at Gwanbuk(關北) districts in 1613, Heojun explained the cause of Dangdokyeok as meteorology under the feudal conditions, and concluded Simhwa(心火) by fever toxin, Therefore he selected the method of puting out Simhwa by attack of fever toxin. In addition he presented emergency treatment that can maintain the airway by bleeding. To treat Dangdokyeok, Heojun presented lots of prescriptions so as Seungmagalgeuntang(升麻葛根湯), Cheongyeolhaedoksan(淸熱解毒散), Yeongyopaedok-san(連翹敗毒散), Bangpungtongsaongsan(防風通聖散), Jowiseunggitang(調胃升氣湯) and Hwangryeonhaedoktang(黃連解毒湯) etc. And he proposed Samdueum (三豆飮), Realgar(石雄黃) and so on to prevent infection from that. They presume from 120 to 150 years as the period of human adaptation to the first epidemics. Dangdokyeok put a large number of people to death at first, but it wasn't referred at the history any more after Byeokyeoksinbang. So we can say that the treatment of Heojun may be effective. Common cold and dyspeptic cold broke out in our country differently from 'Shanghan(傷寒)' in the China, so we had settled 'pestilence infectious epidemic disease(瘟疫)' while 'epidemic febrile disease(溫病)' of the China. Dangdokyeok of Heojun is similar to 'Scalet fever' belonging to 'virulent heat pathogen(溫毒)', 'newly epidemic febrile disease(新感溫病)'. As a cure of Dangdokyeok, the Korean medicine uses the treatment of removing fever state whereas the western medicine uses the antibiotics to kill the streptococcus. The symptoms of Dangdokyeok are remarkably similar to those of the Scarlatina, so this occupies a high position on the world history of medicine in aspects of the period and details of symptoms. These days we have the problems that the tolerance of antibiotics increases and disease of unknown cause is prevalent. It means the western medicine get to limits. So if we progress epidemiography based on Heojun's medicine, we may contribute to the world history of medicine.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
• /
• v.33 no.3
• /
• pp.184-189
• /
• 2007

Pathogenic microbial foodborne disease outbreaks (PMFBDOs) have increased in many countries, the boom in food service establishment is not matched by effective food safety and control. In this study, we investigated the current state and the epidemic aspects of FBDOs in Korea and Japan. In Korea, the average prevalence rate of foodborne disease (FBD) was 15.0 per 100,000 population and cases per outbreak of FBD was 57.0. During the same period in Japan, the prevalence rate showed an average of 24.9, and the cases per outbreak were 16. When both prevalence rate and cases per outbreak were compared, the prevalence rate in Japan was much higher than that in Korea (p<0.01). However, average cases per outbreak of FBD in Japan were much lower than those in Korea (p<0.01). In Korea, outbreaks of FBDs were more common in spring (p<0.01), while in Japan, more frequent in summer and winter (p<0.01). Outbreaks of FBD occurred largely through restaurant and school foods (32.0% and 27.5%) in Korea. In Japan, the proportion of the outbreak cases in the restaurant and home were 23.7% and 12.1%, and cases of unknown causes of FBDs were 48.2%, respectively. Bacteria were the major causes of infection in both countries. The prevalence of PMFBDOs by Salmonella spp. Vibrio parahemolyticus and Staphylococcus aureus were much higher in Korea, while those by Camphylobacter spp. and SRSV were more common in Japan. The causes by virus were more frequent in Japan (13.7%) than in Korea (7.7%). The prevalence of FBDs in Korea and Japan showed characteristic differences, especially in the PMFBDOs due to such factors as geography, climate, culture, diet and food management.

• Korean journal of aerospace and environmental medicine
• /
• v.29 no.3
• /
• pp.96-100
• /
• 2019

The present study analyzed all of exotic malaria (EM) cases reported in the Republic of Korea (Korea) and Japan from 2015 to 2017 to assess the trends of incidence overtime to review the risk factors for travelers visiting malaria-endemic countries. We investigated 162 cases of EM in Korea with a cumulative incidence rate (CIR) of 0.105 per 100,000 populations nationwide and the CIR of the oversea travelers was 0.238 per 100,000 travelers, respectively. During the same period in Japan, 152 cases of EM in nationwide with a CIR of 0.041 and in the oversea travelers with a CIR of 0.297 were observed. When compared, the CIR of EM in nationwide was much higher than that in Japan (P<0.01), but a CIR of imported by travelers in Korea was lower than that in Japan (P<0.01).

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.17 no.5
• /
• pp.1377-1393
• /
• 2023

Social media is used for various purposes including entertainment, communication, information search, and voicing their thoughts and concerns about a service, product, or issue. The social media data can be used for information mining and getting insights from it. The World Health Organization has listed COVID-19 as a global epidemic since 2020. People from every aspect of life as well as the entire health system have been severely impacted by this pandemic. Even now, after almost three years of the pandemic declaration, the fear caused by the COVID-19 virus leading to higher depression, stress, and anxiety levels has not been fully overcome. This has also triggered numerous kinds of discussions covering various aspects of the pandemic on the social media platforms. Among these aspects is the part focused on vaccines developed by different countries, their features and the advantages and disadvantages associated with each vaccine. Social media users often share their thoughts about vaccinations and vaccines. This data can be used to determine the popularity levels of vaccines, which can provide the producers with some insight for future decision making about their product. In this article, we used Twitter data for the vaccine popularity detection. We gathered data by scraping tweets about various vaccines from different countries. After that, various machine learning and deep learning models, i.e., naive bayes, decision tree, support vector machines, k-nearest neighbor, and deep neural network are used for sentiment analysis to determine the popularity of each vaccine. The results of experiments show that the proposed deep neural network model outperforms the other models by achieving 97.87% accuracy.

• Safety and Health at Work
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.11-16
• /
• 2012

Lead poisoning is one of the earliest identified and most known occupational disease. Its acute effects have been recognized from antiquity when this condition principally afflicted manual workers and slaves, actually scarcely considered by the medicine of that time. The Industrial Revolution caused an epidemic of metal intoxication, urging scientists and physician of that period to study and identify specific symptoms and organ alterations related to chronic lead poisoning. During the 20th century, the acknowledgment of occupational and environmental toxicity of lead fostered public awareness and legislation to protect health. More recently, the identification of sub-clinical effects have greatly modified the concept of lead poisoning and the approaches of medicine towards this condition. Nowadays, lead poisoning is rarely seen in developed countries, but it still represents a major environmental problem in certain areas. Consequently, it may appear as a paradigm of "occupational and environmental disease," and the history of this condition seems to parallel the historical development of modern "Occupational and Environmental Health" as a more complete medical discipline.

• Animal cells and systems
• /
• v.16 no.5
• /
• pp.351-356
• /
• 2012

Food is important to any animal, and a large part of the behavioral repertoire is concerned with ensuring adequate nutrition. Two main nutritional sensations, hunger and satiety, produce opposite behaviors. Hungry animals seek food, increase exploratory behavior and continue feeding once they encounter food. Satiated animals decrease exploratory behavior, take rest, and stop feeding. The signals of hunger or satiety and their effects on physiology and behavior will depend not only on the animal's current nutritional status, but also on its experience and the environment in which the animal evolved. In our novel, nutritionally rich environment, improper control of appetite contributes to diseases from anorexia to the current epidemic of obesity. Despite extraordinary recent advances, genetic contribution to appetite control is still poorly understood partly due to lack of simple genetic model systems. In this review, we will discuss current understanding of molecular and cellular mechanisms by which animals regulate food intake depending on their nutritional status. Then, focusing on relatively less known muscarinic and cGMP signals, we will discuss how the molecular and behavioral aspects of hunger and satiety are conserved in a simple invertebrate model system, Caenorhabditis elegans so as for us to use it to understand the genetics of appetite control.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.197-209
• /
• 1998

In mordern society, nutritional and appetite disorders occur in epidemic proportions and are serious health harzards. Obesity and diabetes affect over 30% of American population, while eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa occur in a growing number of adolescences and young adults. The changes in various sociocultural aspects with the introduction of Westernized culture have had the effect of increasing the risk of same problems in Korea. Disorderd eating patterns are a primary symptom of numerous psychiatric disorders and loss of appetite and cachexia, during illness or in the elderly, preclude proper medical treatment for restoring good health or preserving life. Increased understanding of the systems of the body and brain, related to energy and nutrient balance, may help us to treatment and ultimately prevent these commom disorders. In this review, the author highlights the psychobiological mechanisms or factors which are associated with eating behavior, especially in the view of intake psychobiology. This review would be concentrated on 1) the theoretical concepts and theories of eating behavior ; 2) the psychobiological determinants of food intake ; and 3) the psychobiological control of eating behavior.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Applied Pharmacology
• /
• 1996.11a
• /
• pp.171-172
• /
• 1996

Cocaine is a powerful reinforcer that has become a popular drug of abuse in man. CNS effects that are related to the abuse of cocaine include feeling of well-being and euphoria. Brain dopamine systems are thought to mediate reinforcement and it is often assumed that cocaine's inhibition of dopamine uptake is the mechanism underlying its reinforcing effects. With increase in cocaine use among general population in recent years, adverse effects of the drug have occurred in all social strata and age groups. Therefore, it has been recognized that the epidemic of cocaine abuse is a growing major concerning public health. One of the most troubling aspects of cocaine abuse is its use by pregnant women. Drug abuse during pregnancy puts two lives at risk. Cocaine produces toxic effects on the fetus at concerntrations that are apparently nontoxic to the mother. Not only does cocaine cross the placenta via diffusion and via rapid penetration to mucous membranes, due to its high lipid solubility, but cocaine can also be found in breast milk, the effects of the cocaine can persist long after the child is born. Although it is known that prenatal cocaine exposure is associated with developmental risk to the fetus ana newborn, few studies have been conducted to assess the mechanisms whereby either short-term or long-term administration of cocaine can exert its harmful effects on the mother or the child. Therefore, it was our great interest to investigate the pharmacological and neurobehavioral changes in offspring that are prenatally exposed to cocaine.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.97-114
• /
• 2000

Minority populations in the United States have a higher prevalence of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) and more persons die of the disease than white persons. This study was to review and compare risk factors and prevalence rates of NIDDM in African Americans, Hispanic s, Korean Americans and Native Americans in the United States. The risk factors of NIDDM, including family history of diabetes, obesity, physical inactivity, diet and age, were reviewed in the minority populations. Risk factors such as obesity, physical inactivity and family history of diabetes occurred to a greater extent in some minority populations than in the white population. Diabetes should be treated as a public health problem for minority populations. Due to the increase of older populations and the increased prevalence of obesity and sedentariness, NIDDM in minorities is nearing epidemic proportions. Good diet and regular exercise can reduce the incidence of NIDDM but an understanding of the cultural aspects of diabetes is imperative in order to provide adequate community health education programs because those programs involve diet and behavior changes, characteristics that are often culturally determined. In summary, it is important to plan a community health education program targeted on NIDDM in a culturally adapted manner that will be received with both comprehension and acceptability. In particular, the program for high-risk populations should be stressed so to prevent diabetes. Preventive approaches to diabetes should be considered because they can be both therapeutic and cost effective.