• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.8
• /
• pp.3403-3410
• /
• 2014

Context: Interest exits in whether TNF-alpha antagonists increase the risk of breast cancer and total malignancies in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Objectives: To analyze the risk of malignancies, especially breast cancer, in patients with RA enrolled in randomized control trials (RCTs). Methods: A systematic literature search for RCTs from 1 January 1998 to 1 July 2013 from online databases, such as PubMed, WILEY, EMBASE, ISI web of knowledge and Cochrane Library was conducted. Studies included RCTs that compared the safety of at least one dose of the five TNF-${\alpha}$ antagonists with placebo or methotrexate (MTX) (or TNF-${\alpha}$ antagonists plus MTX vs placebo plus MTX) in RA patients for more than 24 weeks and imported all the references into document management software EndNote${\times}6$. Two independent reviewers selected studies and extracted the data about study design, patients' characteristics and the type, number of all malignancies. Results: 28 RCTs from 34 records with 11,741 patients were analyzed. Of the total, 97 developed at least one malignancy during the double-blind trials, and breast cancer was observed in 17 patients (17.5% of total malignancies). However, there was no statistically significant increased risk observed in either the per protocol (PP) model (OR 0.65, 95%CI [0.22, 1.93]) or the modified intention to treat (mITT) model (OR 0.75, 95%CI [0.25, 2.21]). There were also no significant trend for increased risk of total malignancies on anti-TNF-${\alpha}$ therapy administered at approved doses in either model (OR, 1.06, 95%CI [0.64, 1.75], and OR, 1.30, 95%CI [0.80, 2.14], respectively). As to the two models, modified intention to treat model analysis led to higher estimation than per protocol model analysis. Conclusions: This study did not find a significantly increased risk of breast cancer and total malignancies in adults RA patients treated with TNF-${\alpha}$ antagonists at approved doses. However, it cannot be ignored that more patients developed malignancies with TNF-${\alpha}$ antagonists therapy compared with patients with placebo or MTX, in spite of the lack of statistical significance, so that more strict clinical trials and long-term follow-up are needed, and both mITT and PP analyses should be used in such safety analyses.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
• /
• v.52 no.3
• /
• pp.315-323
• /
• 2009

Purpose : This study aimed to perform a systematic review of the reports on Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia in the last 30 years (1980-2006) to investigate the intervals between outbreaks, change in the peak incidence age, and diagnostic methods. We also aimed to validate the proper diagnostic criteria for M. pneumoniae pneumonia. Methods : We reviewed 62 original articles on M. pneumoniae pneumonia in Korean children. We analyzed the annual or seasonal variation, study areas, patient age, journal names, and the date of each report. Further, we checked the methods and criteria used for the diagnosis of M. pneumoniae pneumonia. We also confirmed the proper mycoplasma antibody cutoff using the mycoplasma IgM titer as the gold standard. Results : In the last 30 years, epidemic outbreaks of M. pneumoniae pneumonia occurred every 3 years, except in 1993-1994 and 1996-1997. Seasonal variations were also present and were most prevalent in October and November. The number of preschool children, especially those aged 3 years or younger, with M. pneumoniae pneumonia has increased (P<0.05). The mycoplasma antibody titer of 1:640 or greater was appropriate for diagnosing M. pneumoniae pneumonia, with an acceptable sensitivity and specificity of detection. Conclusion : We analyzed the results of studies on M. pneumoniae pneumonia in Korean children during the last 30 years. Infection in younger children is increasing, and further research is required to reveal the major cause of the changing epidemics.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
• /
• v.37 no.8
• /
• pp.688-700
• /
• 2004

This study was conducted to analyze how appropriate the on-line nutrition information was externally as a web information. Four-hundred-ninety-seven web sites from 5 internet search engines (Yahoo, Empas, Nate, Hanmir, Naver) were selected on the basis of April 25th, 2004. The skillful personnels monitored them about 8 evaluating categories: clarity, purpose, authority, durability, advertisement, privacy and/or security, responsibility, and contents. Forty percent of the selected web sites were operated by the companies which had commercial purpose like internet shopping malls and 5.6% by academies, societies, research institutions, schools/colleges and public institutions. Most of web sites (76.1 %) were managed for advertisements and sales of companies' commodities, and 32.6% had the food and nutrition information as first purpose. Ninety-three percent of web sites were targeted to healthy individuals through whole life cycle. Specifically, there were lots of web sites for the obesity which were offered by diet related companies. Of the 497 web sites, 193 mentioned the name providing the nutrition information, but only 1/3 had reliability on their specialty. As a source of nutrition information, 52.7% of web sites were using 'books of the major field' and 42.0% 'newspapers' and 23.7% 'broadcasting', respectively. Most web sites mentioned 'setting-up date' but not 'renewal date'. Thirty-six percent of web sites took '2 - 3 days' for the operators to answer the questions through the bulletin. Forty-seven percent of web sites answered' 1 - 10 questions' per 1 week, but 40.1 % of them didn't answer for a week at all. There were 118 web sites (23.7%) to record the connected frequencies and 36.0% of them put the advertisements. Around 96% of web sites mentioned feedback addresses. Among the menus of web sites, 68.0% were about self-advertisement and 64.0% about nutrition information. Each web site was scored to judge its external quality according to the operators by selecting 13 items. Web sites managed by public institution had highest scores (9.5), and lowest in private vendors', food companies' and individual web pages. Among search engines, Naver got the highest score of 7.0 and Nate the lowest one of 6.1. As it was only the pilot study, there were several limits in evaluating tools, time and monitored quantity. To make monitoring of on-line nutrition informatiions actively, standardized monitoring forms might be developed under the integrated studies.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.167-177
• /
• 1991

O-ethyl S-methyl ethylphosphonothioate [$LD_{50}$ (rat, oral) 4.6mg/kg ; $K_i$(bovine erythrocyte acetylcholinesterase) 303 $M^{-1\;min-1}$] was selected as a model compound to study the mode of action of O, S-dialkyl alkylphosphonothioates which have been hypothesized to be toxic via a bioactivation process. Two chemical oxidants, meta-chloroperoxybenzoic acid and monoperoxyphthalic acid, and rat liver microsomal oxidases were used to mimic the action of mixed function oxidases on the model compound. The formation of S-oxide, a very unstable active intermediate, was proposed based on the identification of metabolic products.Furthermore, a trapping experiment with ethanol showed that the unstable intermediate S-oxide had the ability to phosphorylate acetylcholinesterase which is an important enzyme in nerve systems. The S-oxide intermediates are presumed to be responsible for the toxicity of O,S-dialkyl alkylphosphonothioates.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
• /
• s.32
• /
• pp.159-187
• /
• 2013

The purpose of this study is to verify the status of current digital comics research trends and the characteristics in Korea. For this purpose, 87 articles and dissertations published between 19900 to 2012 were analysed by a meta-analysis methods. Digital comics platforms, topics, methods were examined to understand the landscape of the digital comics in Korean context. The main results of this study are as follow. First of all, the number of researches on the digital comics has been in the rise, and the various academic journals have published articles to understand the digital comics on the basis of their own academic background. Despite of the short history of digital comics researches, the range of research subjects has been broaden, and more integrated approaches have been taken from the various research fields. The content of articles, however, was skewed to a certain platform, topic and the method such as the website based comics, the text analysis, and the qualitative methodology. Thus, the more systematic and integrated approaches are needed to understand the digital comics issues and to build up the digital comics studies.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
• /
• v.23 no.3 s.81
• /
• pp.35-47
• /
• 2005

This paper is to review a literature concerning Bus Transit Route Network Design(BTRNDP), to describe a future study direction for a systematic application for the BTRNDP. Since a bus transit uses a fixed route, schedule, stop, therefore an approach methodology is different from that of auto network design problem. An approach methodology for BTRNDP is classified by 8 categories: manual & guideline, market analysis, system analytic model. heuristic model. hybrid model. experienced-based model. simulation-based model. mathematical optimization model. In most previous BTRNDP, objective function is to minimize user and operator costs, and constraints on the total operator cost, fleet size and service frequency are common to several previous approach. Transit trip assignment mostly use multi-path trip assignment. Since the search for optimal solution from a large search space of BTRNDP made up by all possible solutions, the mixed combinatorial problem are usually NP-hard. Therefore, previous researches for the BTRNDP use a sequential design process, which is composed of several design steps as follows: the generation of a candidate route set, the route analysis and evaluation process, the selection process of a optimal route set Future study will focus on a development of detailed OD trip table based on bus stop, systematic transit route network evaluation model. updated transit trip assignment technique and advanced solution search algorithm for BTRNDP.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.160-167
• /
• 2017

The purpose of this systematic review was to investigate the association between periodontal disease and chronic kidney disease. A search of Embase, PubMed and The Cochrane Library databases was performed up to April 17, 2016. Article selection was based on cohort study design and the study subjects were patients with periodontal disease or severe periodontal disease. The final result was development of chronic kidney disease and kidney function decrease based on the estimated glomerular filtration rate values. The quantitative synthesis of the final selected articles was assessed using Review Manager statistical analysis software. A fixed-effects model meta-analysis was performed to estimate the degree of association between periodontal disease and chronic kidney disease. The search strategy identified 3,018 potentially eligible articles, of these, four studies were finally selected for meta-analysis, revealing that periodontal disease was significantly associated with the risk of developing chronic kidney disease (odds ratio, 1.65; 95% confidence interval, 1.44~1.90; p<0.001). In order to prevent the development of chronic kidney disease and kidney function decrease it is important to prevent periodontal disease, as well as minimizing the traditional risk factors known to reduce the quality of life of patients and increase disease burden.

• Journal of Periodontal and Implant Science
• /
• v.46 no.1
• /
• pp.22-34
• /
• 2016

Purpose: Gingival recession is a major esthetic concern and may lead to root sensitivity during periodontal treatment. Coronally advanced flaps (CAFs) with and without acellular dermal matrix (ADM) are widely used in root coverage procedures. The aim of this study was to analyze the efficacy of CAF in combination with ADM in the treatment of gingival recession. Methods: PubMed, The Cochrane Library, and Embase were used to identify relevant articles. The articles were screened, data were extracted, and the quality of the studies was assessed by three reviewers with expertise in clinical practice, trials, statistics, and biomedical editing. The clinical endpoints of interest included changes in recession, probing depth (PD), clinical attachment level (CAL), and keratinized tissue (KT). Results: Ten randomized controlled trials were identified, including six studies that compared CAFs with ADM and CAFs using connective tissue grafting (CTG) and four studies that compared CAFs with or without ADM. No statistically significant differences were found between the use of ADM and CTG, whereas statistically significant differences were found between groups in which ADM and CAF were combined and groups that underwent CAF alone with regard to recession coverage, CAL, and KT. The combination of CAF with an ADM allograft achieved more favorable recession coverage and recovery of CAL and KT than CAF alone. Conclusions: The results from the ADM and CTG groups suggest that both procedures may be equally effective in clinical practice. Given the limitations of this study, further investigation is needed to clarify the effectiveness of ADM and CAF in clinical practice.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
• /
• v.18D no.4
• /
• pp.261-274
• /
• 2011

In recent competitive business environment each enterprise has to be agile and flexible. For these purposes run-time monitoring ofservices provided by an enterprise and early decision making through this becomes core competition of the enterprise. In addition, in order to process various innumerable events which are generated on enterprise systems techniques which make filtering of meaningful data are needed. However, the existing study related with this is nothing but discovering of service faults by monitoring depending upon API of BPEL engine or middleware, or is nothing but processing of simple events based on low-level events. Accordingly, there would be limitations to provide useful business information. In this paper, through situation detection an extended complex event model is presented, which is possible to provide more valuable and useful business information. Concretely, first of all an event processing architecture in an enterprise system is proposed, and event meta-model which is suitable to the proposed architecture is going to be defined. Based on the defined meta-model, It is presented that syntax and semantics of constructs in our event processing language including various and progressive event operators, complex event pattern, key, etc. In addition, an event context mechanism is proposed to analyze more delicate events. Finally, through application studies application possibility of this study would be shown and merits of this event model would be present through comparison with other event model.

• Journal of Obesity & Metabolic Syndrome
• /
• v.25 no.3
• /
• pp.138-148
• /
• 2016

Background: The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of an abdominal obesity management program in middle-aged women in Korea. Methods: Examination of databases, including the Research Information Sharing Service, Database Periodical Information Academic, and Korean Studies Information, resulted in identification of 772 studies performed up to 2014, of which 43 satisfied the inclusion data. Data analysis was performed using R version 3.2 to calculate the effect sizes, explore possible causes of heterogeneity, and check for publication bias, using a funnel plot and its trim-and-fill analysis. Results: The mean effect size of the management program was small (g=0.22), along with the anthropometric index (g=0.18), metabolism index (g=0.21), fat-distribution (g=0.36), and inflammatory index (g=0.36). Moderator analysis was performed to determine heterogeneity, but no significant differences were found between the randomized controlled trial (RCT) group and non-RCT group. In addition, the length of the session was found to be statistically significant after performing a meta-regression. Finally, a funnel plot with a trim-and-fill analysis was produced to check for publication bias, but no significant bias was detected. Conclusion: Based on these findings, the abdominal obesity management program affects middle-aged women in Korea. Further research is needed to target other age groups with abdominal obesity.