• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.78 no.3
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• pp.253-257
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• 2015

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of mortality among human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) patients and the majority of them occur in developing countries. The aims of the present study were to determine the frequency of HIV/TB co-infection and other probable associated factors. Methods: This 10 year retrospective study was conducted on 824 HIV patients in the south-west of Iran. HIV infection was diagnosed by the enzyme linked immunosorbent assay and confirmed by Western blot. TB diagnosis was based on consistency of the clinical manifestations, chest X-ray, and microscopic examination. Drug susceptibility testing was done by the proportional method on $L{\ddot{o}}wenstein$-Jensen media. Results: Of 824 HIV patients, 59 (7.2%) were identified as TB co-infected and the majority (86.4%) of them were male. Of the overall TB infected patients, 6 cases (10.2%) showed multidrug-resistant with the mean CD4+ lymphocyte count of $163{\pm}166cells/mm^3$. The main clinical forms of TB were pulmonary (73%). There was a significant (p<0.05) correlation between TB infection and CD4+ lymphocyte counts ${\leq}200cells/mm^3$, gender, prison history, addiction history, and highly active anti-retroviral therapy. Conclusion: We reported novel information on frequency of HIV/TB co-infection and multidrug resistant-TB outcome among co-infected patients that could facilitate better management of such infections on a global scale.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.3907-3912
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• 2015

Purpose: To investigate the antitumor activity and mechanism of chloroquine (CQ) in combination with cisplatin (DDP) in nude mice xenografted with gastric cancer SGC7901 cells. Materials and Methods: 35 cases of gastric cancer patients with malignant ascites were enrolled and intraperitoneal cisplatin injection was performed. Ascites were collected before and 5 days after perfusion for assessment of autophagy levels in cancer cells. In addition, 24 tumor-bearing mice were randomly divided into control, DDP, CQ and CQ + DDP groups. Results: In 54.3% (19/35) of patients the treatment was therapeutically effective (OR), 5 days after peritoneal chemotherapy, 13 patients had the decreased ascites Beclin-1 mRNA levels. In 16 patients who had NR, only 2 cases had decreased Beclin-1 (P=0.001). Compared with the control group, the xenograft growth in nude mice in the DDP group was low, and the inhibition rate was 47.6%. In combination with chloroquine, the inhibition rate increased to 84.7% (P<0.01). The LC3-II/I ratio, and Beclin1 and MDR1/P-gp expression were decreased, while caspase 3 protein levels increased (P<0.05). Conclusions: Antitumor ability of cisplatin was associated with autophagy activity and chloroquine can enhance chemosensitivity to cisplatin in gastric cancer xenografts nude mice.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.392-398
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• 2005

Background : The last national tuberculosis survey was carried out in 1995. In 2000, the KTBS(Korean Tuberculosis Surveillance System) replaced a previous national survey. However, the KTBS does not show some of the important epidemiological indexes such as the prevalence of positive tuberculosis or the drug resistance rate. The aim of this study was to compare the clinical features of pulmonary tuberculosis patients admitted to a national tuberculosis hospital in 1995 and 2002. From this study, the authors expect to estimate the trend of the clinical features of tuberculosis in Korea even though it can not represent the Korean tuberculosis situation as a whole. Method : A cross sectional analysis of the clinical features for 331 pulmonary tuberculosis in-patients admitted to the National Masan Tuberculosis Hospital as of Dec. 2002, was carried out and these results were compared with those reported in 1995. Results : In comparison with the data reported in 1995, the mean age was increased by 3.6 years ($44.1{\pm}14.6$ vs $47.7{\pm}16.4$, p<0.01). The number of past tuberculosis history and used anti-tuberculous drugs prior to admission decreased from $2.0{\pm}1.7$ and $6.1{\pm}2.3$ to $1.7{\pm}1.8$ and $4.6{\pm}3.6$(p<0.05, p<0.001), respectively. While the resistance rate for anti-tuberculous drugs was similar (81.0% vs 77.6%), the initial resistance rate(10.5% vs 21.4%) and initial MDR rate(2.4% vs 16.5%) increased significantly(p=0.012, p=0.001, respectively). In 1995, the public health communities were in charge of approximately 65% of newly diagnosed tuberculosis cases, but this reduced to 40.5% in 2002(p<0.001). Conclusion : The existing national TB program (NTP) needs to be revised and strengthened in order to cope with the unfavorably changing situation of the domestic TB problem because the number of TB patients has not decreased and the initial resistance rate has increased greatly. Furthermore, the public and private sectors should cooperate each other to control the TB problem effectively because the private sector is now managing more than half of the TB patients.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.241-259
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• 2003

The Basic Semantic Register(BSR) is and official ISO register designed for interoperability among eBusiness and EDI systems. The entities registered in the current BSR are not defined in a machine-understandable way, which renders automatic extraction of structural and relationship information from the register impossible. The purpose of this study is to offer a framework for designing an ontology that can provide semantic interoperability among BSR-based systems by defining data structures and relationships with RDF and OWL, similar meaning by the 'equivalentClass' construct in OWL, the hierachical relationships among classes by the 'subClassOf' construct in RDF schema, definition of any entities in BSR by the 'label' construct in RDF schema, specification of usage guidelines by the 'comment' construct in RDF schema, assignment of classes to BSU's by the 'domain' construct in RDF schema, specification of data types of BSU's by the 'range' construct in RDF schema. Hierarchical relationships among properties in BSR can be expressed using the 'subPropertyOf' in RDF schema. Progress in semantic interoperability can be expected among BSR-based systems through applications of semantic web technology suggested in this study.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.3219-3226
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• 2014

Chemotherapy continues to be a mainstay of cancer treatment, although drug resistance is a major obstacle. Lipid metabolism plays a critical role in cancer pathology, with elevated ether lipid levels. Recently, alkylglyceronephosphate synthase (AGPS), an enzyme that catalyzes the critical step in ether lipid synthesis, was shown to be up-regulated in multiple types of cancer cells and primary tumors. Here, we demonstrated that silencing of AGPS in chemotherapy resistance glioma U87MG/DDP and hepatic carcinoma HepG2/ADM cell lines resulted in reduced cell proliferation, increased drug sensitivity, cell cycle arrest and cell apoptosis through reducing the intracellular concentration of lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), lysophosphatidic acid-ether (LPAe) and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), resulting in reduction of LPA receptor and EP receptors mediated PI3K/AKT signaling pathways and the expression of several multi-drug resistance genes, like MDR1, MRP1 and ABCG2. ${\beta}$-catenin, caspase-3/8, Bcl-2 and survivin were also found to be involved. In summary, our studies indicate that AGPS plays a role in cancer chemotherapy resistance by mediating signaling lipid metabolism in cancer cells.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.30 no.8B
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• pp.549-561
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• 2005

As Internet and network technologies have been developed, e-commerces are getting more complex and more various. This paper, for meta-data and data exchange between heterogeneous database systems, uses XML schema proposed in W3C, and XML schema can present meta-data and data of relational database system as XML document format which is structural. It supports various primitive data formats, so that it uses the structure which reflects adequately data formats which relational database system offered. However, current e-commerces use heterogeneous platforms, so difficulties that is mutual interchange and management exist. For the solution for these problems, a standard ontology which defines relations of product classifications and the standard of property expression and the location ontology which offers e-commerce's information about products are constructed. Applying these ontology information to search system, by offering information which customers need efficient search is performed. Combining these ontologies and product classification category information, called XMDR, this XMDR is introduced into product search system, so this paper proposes to construct ontology server method for efficient search.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.60 no.3
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• pp.118-127
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• 2016

A growing number of studies have demonstrated that ABCB1 gene polymorphisms are associated with the variability of responses to imatinib. However, the effects of ABCB1 polymorphisms on imatinib response in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) are inconsistent. The aim of the present study was to clarify the associations between ABCB1 polymorphisms and imatinib response in CML. A systematic literature review was performed. The databases of PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library were searched for all published studies from inception to December 2015. The following terms were used with functions of 'AND' and 'OR': 'chronic myeloid leukemia', 'CML', 'ABCB1', 'MDR1', 'polymorphism', 'SNP', and 'imatinib'. Using the Review Manager 5, odds ratios (ORs) were pooled to estimate the effect of ABCB1 polymorphisms on imatinib response in CML. The pooled analysis showed that ABCB1 2677 G allele was significantly associated with poor response to imatinib in African and Asian patients (GG vs TT, OR: 0.32, p<0.0001; GG+GT vs TT, OR: 0.44, p=0.0005). In subgroup analyses, African patients carrying ABCB1 1236 C allele exhibited higher risk for worse response, whereas Asian patients with 1236 C allele showed better response (CC+CT vs TT, OR: 0.41, p=0.008 for African; OR: 1.65, p=0.03 for Asian). There was no association between C3435T polymorphisms and imatinib response in African, Asian, and Caucasian CML patients.

• Elastomers and Composites
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.231-237
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• 2012

This study measured the mechanical and damping properties of EPDM compounds including fillers. Semi-reinforcing furnace black (SRF), high abrasion furnace black (HAF) and acetylene black were used as fillers. Dicumyl peroxide (DCP) were used as curing agents. The measurements were conducted using a moving die rheometer (MDR), durometer, universal testing machine (UTM), compression set and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). The tensile strength and elongation at break increased with increasing SRF contents in EPDM compounds. However, they decreased with increasing the amount of acetylene black. In the inspecting temperature range, EPDM compound filled acetylene black had stable storage modulus. Furthermore, the tan ${\delta}$ of the EPDM compounds obtained was enhanced by compounding with acetylene black.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.338-343
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• 2004

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop a small animal PET using dual layer phoswich detector to minimize parallax error that degrades spatial resolution at the outer part of field-of-view (FOV). Materials and Methods: A simulation tool GATE (Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission) was used to derive optimal parameters of small PET, and PET was developed employing the parameters. Lutetium Oxyorthosilicate (LSO) and Lutetium-Yttrium Aluminate-Perovskite(LuYAP) was used to construct dual layer phoswitch crystal. $8{\times}8$ arrays of LSO and LuYAP pixels, $2mm{\times}2mm{\times}8mm$ in size, were coupled to a 64-channel position sensitive photomultiplier tube. The system consisted of 16 detector modules arranged to one ring configuration (ring inner diameter 10 cm, FOV of 8 cm). The data from phoswich detector modules were fed into an ADC board in the data acquisition and preprocessing PC via sockets, decoder block, FPGA board, and bus board. These were linked to the master PC that stored the events data on hard disk. Results: In a preliminary test of the system, reconstructed images were obtained by using a pair of detectors and sensitivity and spatial resolution were measured. Spatial resolution was 2.3 mm FWHM and sensitivity was 10.9 $cps/{\mu}Ci$ at the center of FOV. Conclusion: The radioactivity distribution patterns were accurately represented in sinograms and images obtained by PET with a pair of detectors. These preliminary results indicate that it is promising to develop a high performance small animal PET.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.2425-2430
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• 2015

Clinical resistance to chemotherapeutic agents is one of the major hindrances in the treatment of human cancers. EHZ2 is involved in drug resistance and is overexpressed in drug-resistant cancer cell lines. In this study, we investigated the effects of EHZ2 on cisplatin -resistance in A549/DDP and AGS/DDP cells. EHZ2 mRNA and protein were found to be significantly overexpressed in A549/DDP and AGS/DDP cells, compared to parental cells. EHZ2 siRNA successfully silenced EHZ2 mRNA and protein expression. Proliferation was inhibited and drug resistance to cisplatin was improved. Flow cytometry showed that silencing of EHZ2 arrested A549/DDP and AGS/DDP cells in the G0/G1 phase, increasing apoptosis, rh-123 fluorescence intensity and caspase-3/8 activities. Silencing of EHZ2 also significantly reduced the mRNA and protein expression levels of cyclin D1 and MDR1,while up-regulating p15, p21, p27 and miR-218 in A549/DPP cells. Furthermore, silencing of EHZ2 also significantly increased the expression level of tumor suppressor factor miR-218. We also found down-regulating EHZ2 expression increased methylation in A549/DDP and AGS/DDP cells. This study demonstrates that drug resistance can be effectively reversed in human cisplatin-resistant lung and gastric cancer cells through delivery of siRNAs targeting EHZ2.