• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.93-95
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• 2011

Purpose: Mucormycosis generally occurs in patients with uncontrolled diabetes mellitus and immunocompromised conditions. It is rare, but once a patient is infected with it, it can occur as a rapidly extending, aggressive, and life-threatening rhinocerebral infection with a high mortality rate. Methods: A 70-year-old female patient had a 40 years of history of adult onset diabetes mellitus. She presented herself with severe right hemifacial pain, swelling, and weakness for 3 days and was admitted to ENT. On a facial computed tomography (CT) scan, it was found that her infection extended from her inferior temporal scalp to her submental area and involved her submandibular, masseter, prevertebral, parapharyngeal, retropharyngeal, and pharyngeal mucosal space and pansinusitis. Through endoscopic sinus surgery, mucormycosis was confirmed via histologic examination. Results: Despite empiric antibiotics and amphotericin B administration, the patient was in a septic condition and in a coma. The patient's family wanted to withdraw her life support, and the patient expired. Conclusion: Mucormycosis is very rare, but is one of the disastrous complications of uncontrolled diabetes mellitus. Suspicion of its occurrence, based on identified risk factors, and its rapid diagnosis can enhance the chance of its cure.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1163-1168
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• 2016

Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is the bile duct cancer which constitutes one of the important public health problems in Thailand with high mortality rate, especially in the Opisthorchis viverrini (a parasite risk factor for CCA) endemic area of the northeastern region of the country. This study aimed to identify potential biomarkers from the plasma peptidome by CCA patients. Peptides were isolated using 10 kDa cut-off filter column and the flow-through was then used as a peptidome for LC-MS/MS analysis. A total of 209 peptides were obtained. Among these, 15 peptides were concerned with signaling pathways and 12 related to metabolic, regulatory, and biosynthesis of secondary metabolite pathways. Five exclusive peptides were identified as potential biomarkers, i.e. ETS domain-containing transcription factor ERF (P50548), KIAA0220 (Q92617), phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate 3-kinase catalytic subunit beta isoform isoform 1 (P42338), LP2209 (Q6XYC0), and casein kinase II subunit alpha (P19784). Three of these biomarkers are signaling related molecules. A combination of these biomarkers for CCA diagnosis is proposed.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.18
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• pp.7563-7567
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• 2014

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the first cause of death in cirrhotic patients, mostly due to viral hepatitis with HCV or HBV infection. This study was performed to estimate the true prevalence of viral hepatitis-related HCC and the demographic and clinical-pathological associations with the two virus types. Materials and Methods: This cross sectional observational study enrolled clinical data base of 188 HCC patients and variables included from baseline were age, sex, area of residence, clinical-pathological features such as underlying co-morbidity, presence or absence of liver cirrhosis, macrovascular involvement, tumor extension and metastasis, liver lobes involved, serum alpha-fetoprotein level, and hepatitis serologies. Results: Overall prevalence of HCV- and HBV-related HCC was 66.0% and 34.0%, respectively. Patients with HCV were more likely to develop HCC at advanced age ($52.4{\pm}11.9$ vs. $40.7{\pm}12.09$ years), with highly raised serum AFP levels (${\geq}400ng/ml$) 78.2% (HBV 67.1%), large tumor size (HCV-66% >5 cm, HBV-59.3%), and presence of portal vein thrombosis (8.06%, HBV 1.56%). A binominal multivariate analysis showed that HCV-HCC group were more likely to be cirrhotic (OR=0.245, 95%CI: 0.117, 0.516) and had more than two times higher rate of solitary macrovascular involvement (OR=2.533, 95%CI: 1.162, 5.521) as compared with HBV associated HCC. Conclusions: Statistically significant variations were observed from baseline to clinical-pathological characteristics in HCV vs HBV associated HCC. Our study suggests prompt and early screening for high risk patients so that the rate of progression of these chronic viral diseases to cirrhosis and cancer can be decreased.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.171-179
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• 2013

The primary function of navigation system is to provide route search and road guidance for safe driving for drivers. However, the existing route search system provides a simple service that looks up the shortest route using a safe driving DB without considering different road characteristics for the safety of the drivers. In order to maintain the safe driving, rather than searching the shortest path, a navigation system, in which the danger areas and/or the dangerous time zones have been considered, is required. Therefore, in this paper we propose a strategy of searching a navigation path to avoid danger areas for safe driving by using the A* algorithm. In the strategy, when evaluating the path-specific fitness of the navigation nodes, different heuristic weights were assigned to different types of risk areas. In particular, we considered three kinds of danger areas, such as accident-prone sections where accidents occur frequently, school zones, and intersection regions, as well as the time slots when the probability of danger is high. From computer simulation, the results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can provide the way to avoid danger areas on the route searching and confirm the possibility of providing the actual service.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.327-335
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• 2014

Objectives: Several epidemiological studies on medical care utilization prior to suicide have considered the motivation of suicide, but focused on the influence of physical illnesses. Medical care expenditure in suicide completers with non-illness-related causes has not been investigated. Methods: Suicides motivated by non-illness-related factors were identified using the investigator's note from the National Police Agency, which was then linked to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment data. We investigated the medical care expenditures of cases one year prior to committing suicide and conducted a case-control study using conditional logistic regression analysis after adjusting for age, gender, area of residence, and socioeconomic status. Results: Among the 4515 suicides motivated by non-illness-related causes, medical care expenditures increased in only the last 3 months prior to suicide in the adolescent group. In the younger group, the proportion of total medical expenditure for external injuries was higher than that in the older groups. Conditional logistic regression analysis showed significant associations with being a suicide completer and having a rural residence, low socioeconomic status, and high medical care expenditure. After stratification into the four age groups, a significant positive association with medical care expenditures and being a suicide completer was found in the adolescent and young adult groups, but no significant results were found in the elderly groups for both men and women. Conclusions: Younger adults who committed suicide motivated by non-illness-related causes had a higher proportion of external injuries and more medical care expenditures than their controls did. This reinforces the notion that suicide prevention strategies for young people with suicidal risk factors are needed.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.153-159
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• 2011

A total of 286 individuals from 3 selected communities (Areedi-Aje, Ipakodo/Ojokodo, and Ijebu-Igbo) of Ijebu-North, southwestern Nigeria were examined for Loa loa microfilaremia using finger prick blood smear, between December 2008 and March 2009. Rapid assessment procedure for loiasis (RAPLOA) was used to obtain information, from 187 Ijebu-Igbo residents, on adverse reactions experienced from retrospective treatments with ivermectin and history of eye worm. Only 33.9% of the respondents reported having had a history of eye worm while 33.2% had microfilaremia. The demographic factor of gender was not significant determinants of the prevalence (p>0.05) while age was significant (P<0.05). The highest prevalence of eye worm history and microfilaremia were recorded in 61-70 and 15-20 years of age categories, respectively. Ijebu-Igbo had 27.3% eye worm history, 32.1% microfilaremia, and the highest intensity of 140 microfilariae (mf)/ml. Ipakodo area had the highest eye worm history of 54.4% and the highest intensity of 420 mf/ml. Areedi-Aje had the highest occurrence of 45.2% microfilaremia and the highest intensity of 460 mf/ml. Predictably, Areedi-Aje and Ipakodo areas were high risk communities. The low intensity of L. loa infection with an insignificant (2.1%; P>0.05) adverse reactions from 187 subjects involved in the retrospective ivermectin administration confirmed that ivermectin delivery may be considered safe. The community-directed treatment with ivermectin (CDTI) programme was most probably responsible for the low prevalence and intensity.

• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.243-257
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• 2004

Surveys were carried out from April to December of 2003 to collect the information on hypertension patients for the detailed analysis. Totally, 1,423 patients, who have been registered to the public health center or its branch located in a small city with both urban and countryside characteristics in Kyungsangbuk-Do area, were the subjects of this investigation. The purpose of this research was to examine the health situation of the hypertension patients and to understand the official state of their management program and their own efforts to control the blood pressure, so that we could develop the better program to protect the patients more efficiently and systematically. Eventual purpose was to provide the patients at high risk with the essential informations to prevent the onset of the disease and to promote their health conditions by early diagnosis. Most patients, registered to the public health center, were relatively obedient to the prescription, however, the incidence of being checked up regularly was low. It was turned out that the patients showed a low tendency to practice to maintain the healthy life style such as the proper eating habit or the effort to control the stress. So. it is necessary to develop the strategy and the management program to enhance the self-nursing activities to control the patients' blood pressure at the proper level. In addition, multidisciplinary approaches should to be done for efficient and effective care for hypertension patients. Finally, systematic management of hypertension patients is required to classify the duty and role for caring patients among those health care system.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.306-314
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• 2011

Objectives: Respiratory virus infections are the most common disease among all ages in all parts of the world and occur through airborne transmission. The purpose of this study was to detect and quantitate human respiratory viruses in residential environments. Methods: Air samples were collected from the residential space of apartments in the Seoul/Gyeonggi-do area. The samples were collected from indoor and outdoor air. Among respiratory viruses, influenza A virus, influenza B virus, parainfluenza virus, metapneumovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, and adenovirus were investigated by multiplex polymerase chain reaction. Among the virus-positive samples, we performed adenovirus quantification by real-time polymerase chain reaction. Results: Virus detection rates were 44.0%, 3.8%, 3.4%, and 17.3% in spring, summer, autumn, and winter, respectively. The virus detection rate was higher in winter and spring than in summer and autumn. Adenovirus was most commonly detected, followed by influenza A virus and parainfluenza virus. Virus distribution was not significantly different between indoor and outdoor environments. Conclusions: Although virus concentrations were not high in residential environments, residents in houses with detected viruses may have an increased risk of exposure to airborne respiratory viruses, especially in winter and spring.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.11-23
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• 2020

The effectiveness of in situ sediment capping as a technique for heavy metal risk mitigation in Hyeongsan River estuary, South Korea was studied. Sites in the estuary were found previously to show moderate to high levels of contamination of mercury, methylmercury and other heavy metals. A 400 m × 50 m section of the river was selected for a thin layer capping demonstration, where the total area was divided into 4 sections capped with different combinations of capping materials (zeolite, AC/zeolite, AC/sand, zeolite/sand). Pore water concentrations in the different sites were studied using diffusive gradient in thin film (DGT) probes. All capping amendments showed reduction in the pore water concentration of the different heavy metals with top 5 cm showing %reduction greater than 90% for some heavy metals. The relative maxima for the different metals were found to be translated to lower depths with addition of the caps. For two-layered cap with AC, order of placement should be considered since AC can easily be displaced due to its relatively low density. Investigation of methylmercury (MeHg) in the site showed that MeHg and %MeHg in pore water corresponds well with maxima for sulfide, Fe and Mn suggesting mercury methylation as probably coupled with sulfate, Fe and Mn reduction in sediments. Our results showed that thin-layer capping of active sorbents AC and zeolite, in combination with passive sand caps, are potential remediation strategy for sediments contaminated with heavy metals.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.3243-3248
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• 2016

Background: Stomach cancer is the fourth most common cancer and the second leading cause of death from cancer in the world. In Iran, this type of cancer has high rates of incidence and mortality. This study aimed to assess the survival rate of patients with stomach cancer and its determinants in Kurdistan, a province with one of the highest incidence rates of stomach cancer in the country. Materials and Methods: We studied a total of 202 patients with stomach cancer who were admitted to Tohid Hospital in Sanandaj from 2009 to 2013. Using Kaplan-Meier nonparametric methods the survival rate of patients was calculated in terms of different levels of age at diagnosis, gender, education, residential area, occupation, underweight, and clinical variables including tumor histology, site of tumor, disease stage, and type of treatment. In addition, we compared the survival rates using the log-rank test. Finally, Cox proportional hazards regression was applied using Stata 12 and R 3.1.0 software. The significance level was set at 0.05. Results: The mean age at diagnosis was $64.7{\pm}12.0$ years. The survival rate of patients with stomach cancer was 43.9% and 7% at the first and the fifth year after diagnosis, respectively. The results of log-rank test showed significant relationships between survival and age at diagnosis, education, disease stage, type of treatment, and degree of being underweight (P<0.05). Moreover, according to the results of Cox proportional hazards regression model, the variables of education, disease stage, and type of treatment were associated with patient survival (P<0.05). Conclusions: The survival rate of patients with stomach cancer is low and the prognosis is very poor. Given the poor prognosis of the patients, it is critical to find ways for early diagnosis and facilitating timely access to effective treatment methods.