• BLOOD RESEARCH
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.269-275
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• 2018

Coronary artery ectasia (CAE) is defined as the dilation of a segment of a coronary vessel to at least 1.5 times the diameter of its normal adjacent segment. Mean platelet volume (MPV) plays a role in acute coronary syndromes, with high MPV correlating to poor prognosis for acute thrombotic events and CAE. Several studies investigated the relationship between MPV and CAE, resulting in conflicting results. These results led us to systematically review all studies investigating the relationship between MPV and ectatic heart diseases by performing a meta-analysis study in order to report a unified result. This meta-analysis study investigated all case-control articles examining the relationship between MPV and CAE. All studies in the following databases published until January 31, 2018, were investigated: Science Direct, Scopus, PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of Science. Following a quality control evaluation, 14 articles, all of which were published following studies performed in Turkey from 2007 to 2016, met the criteria for study inclusion. After pooling the results from all of the articles, a total standardized mean difference (SMD) value of 0.584 (95% CI, 0.219, 0.95) was obtained using the D+L pooled SMD, indicating a significant difference (P=0.002) between the two groups, with higher MPV values in ectatic patients when comparing to healthy individuals. Therefore, increased MPV levels were significantly related to CAE, suggesting that platelets, with their inflammatory and thrombotic activities, play a role in this disease. Therefore, anti-platelet and anti-inflammatory therapies may be effective in treating CAE.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.299-308
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• 2020

This study aimed to evaluate the effects of Chuna therapy for Sciatica. We searched the following 16 online databases without a language restriction (Pubmed, Cochrane, Embase, CINAHL, Ovid, Kmbase, RISS, NDSL, OASIS, KISS, KNAL, KTKP, DBpia, CNKI, Wangfang, J-stage) to find randomized controlled clinical trials that used Chuna therapy for Sciatica. The methodological quality of randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) were assessed using the Cochrane risk of bias tool and meta-analysis were performed. Among 496 articles that were searched, 15 RCTs were finally selected for systematic review. 14 studies showed that Chuna therapy has positive effect on sciatica. Two studies noted that there were side effects, and the difference between the intervention group and the control group was statistically insignificant. One study noted no side effects and the rest of the study, there was no mention of side effects. Meta-analysis showed positive results for Chuna single therapy in terms of efficiency rate compared to painkiller, herb medicine excepting acupuncture. When comparing Chuna therapy plus acupuncture and acupuncture, Chuna therapy plus acupuncture had a more positive result than acupuncture in terms of efficiency rate. Cochrane Risk of Bias (RoB)evaluation method, most of the studies's selection, performance, detection and reporting bias were unclear. The studies showed that Chuna therapy can significantly effective on sciatica. However, most of the studies's Risk of Bias included in the analysis were not low enough. In the future, to prove the level of evidence of Chuna therapy, more high-quality studies will be needed.

• The korean journal of orthodontics
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• v.52 no.6
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• pp.420-431
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• 2022

Objective: This systematic review aimed to evaluate periodontal parameters in orthodontically tractioned teeth compared with the respective non-tractioned contralateral teeth. Methods: Search strategies were developed for six electronic databases and gray literature. Random-effects meta-analyses were performed for the outcomes of interest. Furthermore, the certainty of the evidence was assessed using the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) tool. Results: Overall, 2,082 articles were identified, of which 24 were selected for the qualitative synthesis. A significant difference was observed between the impacted and contralateral teeth (mean difference [MD] = 0.25; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.10-0.40; I² = 0%) when the gingival index was evaluated. Additionally, impacted teeth showed a greater probing depth, with a significant mean difference between the groups (MD = 0.14; 95% CI = 0.07-0.20; I² = 6%). Most studies had a low risk of bias; however, the certainty of the evidence was very low owing to the design of existing studies. Conclusions: The evidence in the literature indicated that tractioned teeth might show worsening of periodontal parameters related to the gingival index and probing depth; however, the evidence remains uncertain about this outcome. Furthermore, probing depth should be considered regarding its clinical significance because of the small effect size observed.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.238-244
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• 2023

Background: Occipital neuralgia (ON) is an established risk factor for headaches in the posterior cervical region. Several conservative treatments by nerve decompression and pain relief are available for ON, but these treatments have limitations. Acupuncture treatment, which is known to demonstrate analgesic effects, involves various stimulation methods, and several studies have reported their clinical benefit. No recent systematic review (SR) has compared each acupuncture type for ON treatment. Thus, this SR aims to investigate the clinical effectiveness of each acupuncture type for treating ON. Methods: We will identify relevant studies using electronic databases, including EMBASE, MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Korean Studies Information Service System (KISS), Korean Medical Database, KoreaMed, and National Digital Science Library (NDSL) from the inception until August 2023. The primary outcome will include the numerical change of pain symptoms (visual analog scale and numerical rating scale) and effective rate. Safety and secondary outcomes will include adverse events and quality of life. We will compare the conservative treatment with the acupuncture treatment using network meta-analysis. The Cochrane Collaboration "risk of bias" tools will be used to assess the quality of included trials. The Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation will be used to examine the evidence level. Conclusion: This study will provide clinical evidence of several acupuncture types for ON and help clinicians decide on the best.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.214-237
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• 2023

This study aimed to evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of acupuncture and electroacupuncture for temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD). We searched 11 databases to find randomized-controlled trials (RCTs) published between January 2018 and January 2023 that used acupuncture and electroacupuncture to treat patients with TMD. We performed a meta-analysis of 18 RCTs involving 1,109 patients. Nine studies reported that the treatment and control groups showed improvement in the evaluation index post-treatment. The results of the meta-analysis showed that the treatment groups receiving acupuncture combined with manual therapy had significantly improved visual analog scale score and dysfunction index than the control groups receiving manual therapy. Moreover, the treatment groups receiving acupuncture combined with Western medicine had statistically improved maximum mouth opening than the control groups using Western medicine. In conclusion, acupuncture and electroacupuncture have clinical effects on TMD patients. Given that 11 studies were obtained from the Chinese database, a regional bias would be considered. Furthermore, the included studies had high a risk of bias in terms of randomization, concealment, and blinding. Further studies are required to correct these limitations.

• Journal of Platform Technology
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.12-23
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• 2023

In the 2020s, the K-Pop market has been dominated by girl groups over boy groups and the fourth generation over the third generation. This paper presents methods and results on lyric clustering to investigate whether the generation of girl groups has started to change. We collected meta-information data for 1469 songs of 47 groups released from 2013 to 2022 and classified them into lyric information and non-lyric meta-information and quantified them respectively. The lyrics information was preprocessed by applying word-translation frequency vectorization based on previous studies and then selecting only the top vector values. Non-lyric meta-information was preprocessed and applied with One-Hot Encoding to reduce the bias of using only lyric information and show better clustering results. The clustering performance on the preprocessed data is 129%, 45% higher for Spherical K-Means' Silhouette Score and Calinski-Harabasz Score, respectively, compared to Hierarchical Clustering. This paper is expected to contribute to the study of Korean popular song development and girl group lyrics analysis and clustering.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.126-139
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• 2023

Purpose: This study aimed to analyze interventions for bereaved families and evaluate their effectiveness, with the ultimate goal of supporting evidence-based nursing for bereaved families. Methods: Research trends were identified based on a search of domestic databases from January 2000 to December 2022, and a meta-analysis was conducted on interventions for bereaved families. Forty-five papers were selected, and information was extracted on participants, research design, and interventions. A meta-analysis of seven papers was performed, and the effect size was calculated. Results: Fourteen papers dealt with interventions for middle-aged women who had lost their spouses, 20 used qualitative research methods, and 20 were on art therapy programs. Thirty studies had fewer than 10 participants, and most interventions had 60~120 minutes per session and 9~16 sessions in total. There were seven randomized controlled trials, and all studies included in the quality evaluation showed a low risk of bias. Four papers measured grief as an outcome, and the effect size was -1.9577 (95% CI: -2.9206 to -0.9947), indicating that the treatment significantly decreased grief (P<0.001). Six papers measured depression as an outcome, and the effect size was -1.6775 (95% CI: -2.1835 to -1.1716), showing that the treatment significantly decreased depression (P<0.001). Conclusion: Intervention programs for bereaved families were shown to be effective in relieving grief and depression. However, programs should be developed that target middle-aged men who have lost their spouses and children who have lost their parents. Randomized controlled trials should also be conducted on interventions to reduce grief and depression.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.24-31
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• 2023

Meta-learning is metacognition that instantly distinguishes between knowing and unknown. It is a learning method that adapts and solves new problems by self-learning with a small amount of data.A few-shot learning method is a type of meta-learning method that accurately predicts query data even with a very small support set. In this study, we propose a method to solve the limitations of the prototype created with the mean-point vector of each class. For this purpose, we use the few-shot learning method that created the prototype used in the few-shot learning method as the median prototype. For quantitative evaluation, a handwriting recognition dataset and mini-Imagenet dataset were used and compared with the existing method. Through the experimental results, it was confirmed that the performance was improved compared to the existing method.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.675-702
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• 2023

Objective: This study assessed the effectiveness of using Yijung-tang to treat chronic gastritis through a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Methods: The search was conducted using keywords such as "gastritis", "Lizhong", "Yijung", and "Chronic gastritis" on July 31, 2023. A meta-analysis was conducted according to outcome measurements, such as total effective rate (TER), Traditional chinese medicine symptom score (TSS), gastric hormones, and symptom relief time, using the Review Manager website. Results: A total of 11 RCT studies were selected. The treatment group (Yijung-tang-gagam or Yijung-tang-gagam+Western medicine) showed significant improvement effects in terms of TER, TSS, serum gastrointestinal hormones (motilin (MTL), gastrin (GAS), and somatostatin (SS)), and symptom relief time compared to the control group (Western medicine). TER-RR : 1.20, 95% CI : 1.11 to 1.30, P≤0.00001, RR : 1.21, 95% CI : 1.14 to 1.28, P≤0.00001; MTL-MD : 35.99, 95% CI : 30.79 to 41.20, P≤0.00001); GAS-MD : 103.33, 95% CI : 97.62 to 109.04, P≤0.00001); SS : MD : -37.19, 95% CI : -41.75 to -32.64, P≤0.00001; symptom relief time (nausea)-MD : -1.96, 95% CI : -2.47 to -1.45, P≤0.00001; symptom relief time (colic)-MD : -1.75, 95% CI : -2.31 to -1.18, P≤0.00001. Conclusion: This study suggests that Yijung-tang is effective against chronic gastritis. However, the number of studies was insufficient, and the diagnosis and evaluation criteria were not standardized. Furthermore, because of the low quality of the included studies, more clinical studies need to be conducted to increase the possibility of clinical use.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.81-89
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• 2024

Purpose : This study conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of laser acupuncture for each condition using information from laser acupuncture trials registered on clinicaltrials.gov from January 2013 to June 2023. Methods : We quantitatively and qualitatively analysed the results of 16 clinical trials of laser acupuncture whose research results were confirmed. A risk of bias assessment was also carried out to assess the quality of each clinical trial. Results : A meta-analysis including three clinical trials was conducted to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of laser acupuncture and sham laser acupuncture in reducing pain and found that the laser acupuncture group had a statistically significant reduction in pain compared with the sham laser acupuncture group. In addition, 11 of the 13 trials not included in the meta-analysis showed a positive effect of laser acupuncture. Conclusion : Although laser acupuncture has a long history of clinical use and a lot of research, there is still some scepticism due to the lack of a clear mechanism of action and inconsistent reports of clinical effectiveness. In addition, there is a significant lack of systematic reviews of clinical evidence for major disease specific, and ongoing research is needed to establish an objective evidence base for the clinical effectiveness of laser acupuncture.