• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.109-119
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• 2019

Background : Germany is the first country in the world to introduce modern systems of public health insurance, and the country which most widely uses complementary alternative medicine(CAM) in Europe. In early 21^st century, a large evaluation studies were conducted to include acupuncture in health insurance payments, which were eventually decided. Objectives : This study is to investigate and analyze the process of public policy determination on insurance coverage for acupuncture in German health insurance system. Methods : We collected the data and information through the literature search and from the websites of German government departments and health insurance organizations. To obtain contextual information, German experts of health insurance and acupuncture clinical study were interviewed. Results : As use of acupuncture had been growing, German public health insurers wanted to evaluate the validity of acupuncture coverage and sponsored three evaluation projects for clinical effectiveness of acupuncture using randomized clinical trials, systematic reviews, and pragmatic trials from 2001 to 2005. For some pain condition, acupuncture was founded not to be effective than sham acupuncture, but more effective than standard care. The federal joint committee of health insurance decided to cover acupuncture for chronic pain of lumbar spine and chronic pain in at least one knee joint due to gonarthrosis. Conclusions : Considering the controversial subject matter in the process of acupuncture's health insurance coverage in Germany, expanding the benefits of Korean medicine in Korea needs to come up with ways to overcome the difficulties of placebo effect, standardization and lack of literature evidence.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.10-24
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• 2021

Objectives: Yongdamsagan-tang (YST) and Paljung-san (PJS) in traditional medicine and finasteride in modern medicine are used to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). In recent, the use of combination herbal remedies with conventional drugs has been increasing. Therefore, we investigated the anti-inflammatory effects of these drugs to treat BPH and the influence of herbal formulas on finasteride metabolism. Methods: The inhibitory effects of the herbal formulas and finasteride on the production of inflammatory mediators and cytokines were determined in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-treated RAW 264.7 cells. Additionally, the influence of herbal formulas on activities of human drug metabolizing enzymes (DMEs) was assessed using human microsomal enzymes. Results: We observed that YST, PJS and finasteride inhibited the production of nitric oxide (NO), prostaglandin E₂ (PGE₂) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) in RAW 264.7 cells. The half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) of YST on PGE₂ production was calculated to be below 25 ㎍/mL. YST inhibited the activity of uridine diphosphate-glucuronosyltransterase (UGT) 1A4 with an IC₅₀ value of 49.35 ㎍/mL. The activities of cytochrome P450 (CYP) 1A2, CYP2B6, CYP2C19, CYP3A4, and UGT1A1 were inhibited by PJS (IC₅₀ < 100 ㎍/mL, each). Although PJS and YST inhibited the activities of CYP3A4 and UGT1A4, respectively, these formulas may not influence the metabolism of finasteride because the IC₅₀ values of herbal formulas on DMEs are too high to affect metabolism. Conclusions: Our results suggest that the combination of finasteride and YST or PJS might not influence their drug metabolism and that the drugs may have synergistic effects against BPH.

• Philosophy of Medicine
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• v.15
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• pp.3-37
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• 2013

George Canguilhem(1904-1995) is one of the rare French philosophers of the 20th century to develop an approach that was shaped by a medical education. For him, medicine is considered as "a technique or an art at the junction of many different sciences, rather than a proper science." The thesis that medicine is a technique is presented not at a practical level, but on an axiological horizon which reflects the totality of humanity. This character of medicine became a motive that concretized Canguilhem's philosophical thinking. Medical knowledge is not an application of physiology, but is derived from clinical observations which are based on the personal experiences of each patient. If medicine were based on scientific knowledge and its practice the very application of this pure knowledge, the patient might be a passive object. However, the patient doesn't remain passive, but reacts to the menace of disease according to attitude that the patient developed over the course of his or her life. Canguilhem characterizes this point as 'normativity', the core of individual life, which eludes positivist medicine. Here appear the essential contents of his vitalism. Although they emphasized the activity of individual living being, other modern French vitalists didn't consider this dimension of norms. Since the normativity in Canguilhem concerns the subjectivity of the first person, it avoids a mechanical form of explanation. Thus Canguilhem's originality is found in his derivation of the essence of medicine from individuality, values and norms.

• The Journal of Korean Obstetrics and Gynecology
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.152-168
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• 2009

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine remedies suggested in the papers of ovarian cyst in Chinese Medicine Journals and to establish the further direction. Methods: The papers published between 1994 and 2009 in China Academic Journal were reviewed. Results: 1. It was on Bo-Ryu Enema that main focus of investigation was placed. A variety of randomized controlled trials and case series were found. As a result, a lot of proper manual arts and prescriptions were provided out of them. 2. Acupuncture is reported as significant in reducing the size of ovarian cyst and improving clinical symptoms, which covers electrical acupuncture, enlongated needle and moxibustion, burning acupuncture. 3. External application was verified as an effective therapy for the case of a combined treatment with oral medicine. 4. Modern medical equipments such as ultra short wave medical cure, TDP could improve the efficiency of traditional remedies like Bo-Ryu Enema, external application. Conclusion: It would be necessary to practically come up with a diversity of remedies besides oral decoction of medical ingredients, and establish standard of evidence of them.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.290-306
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• 2024

To treat the novel COronaVIrus Disease (COVID), comparatively fewer medicines have been approved. Due to the global pandemic status of COVID, several medicines are being developed to treat patients. The modern COVID medicines development process has various challenges, including predicting and detecting hazardous COVID medicine responses. Moreover, correctly predicting harmful COVID medicine reactions is essential for health safety. Significant developments in computational models in medicine development can make it possible to identify adverse COVID medicine reactions. Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, there has been significant demand for developing COVID medicines. Therefore, this paper presents the transferlearning methodology and a multilabel convolutional neural network for COVID (MLCNN-COV) medicines development model to identify negative responses of COVID medicines. For analysis, a framework is proposed with five multilabel transfer-learning models, namely, MobileNetv2, ResNet50, VGG19, DenseNet201, and Inceptionv3, and an MLCNN-COV model is designed with an image augmentation (IA) technique and validated through experiments on the image of three-dimensional chemical conformer of 17 number of COVID medicines. The RGB color channel is utilized to represent the feature of the image, and image features are extracted by employing the Convolution2D and MaxPooling2D layer. The findings of the current MLCNN-COV are promising, and it can identify individual adverse reactions of medicines, with the accuracy ranging from 88.24% to 100%, which outperformed the transfer-learning model's performance. It shows that three-dimensional conformers adequately identify negative COVID medicine responses.

• Journal of Ginseng Culture
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• v.2
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• pp.39-70
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• 2020

In this paper, through the mutual interpretation and verification of the ancient Korean history books with different origin that have been suspected as false documents, it proves that they could be logically real records and reveal that the substance of the legendary 'medicine for anti-aging and longevity', which also had been mentioned in Chinese old books, is Korean ginseng. Furthermore, with reference to the modern Y chromosomal map of the migratory routes of mankind corresponding to these routes recorded in 「Budoji」, the core history book, the formation of the four ethnic constitution groups (Sasang Constitution) based on the life style of each human group has been estimated. And the cause of Korean ginseng with fever problem for Southeast Asians is their pharmacogenomic constitution problem by protopanaxatriol (PPT) type ginsenosides in ginseng. It was resolved with over production of protopanaxdiol (PPD) type ginsenosides against PPT type in Korean red ginseng as historical or scientific point of view. In addition, by explaining that the processing method to Korean red ginseng could increase red ginseng acidic polysaccharides (RGAP), the RGAP, PPD type ginsenosides, and arginine which is originally abundant in Korean ginseng could increase the expression of the 'heat shock proteins' as a kind of chaperone in the body, this paper presents the theory allowing the scientific interpretation of the efficacy of Korean red ginseng as an 'adaptogen' or 'medicine for anti-aging and longevity'. Lastly, through the consideration of the growing environment of American ginseng and Korean ginseng, the differences are presented.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1347-1350
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• 2016

Background: Breast cancer prognosis is influenced by several histopathology and clinical factors including expression of Ki67 which may have a predictive role in lymph node negative breast cancer patients. The aim of this study was to assess Ki67 expression in breast cancers without axillary lymph node involvement and to evaluate its prognostic value with regard to disease-free survival. Materials and Methods: Subjects were selected from non-metastatic invasive breast cancer patients who were referred to the oncology department of Ghaem hospital during 1 April 2001 to 1 April 2008. Ki67 levels were measured using immunohistochemistry (IHC) and compared with clinicopathological features. The relation of Ki67 expression with disease-free survival was also analysed. Results: A total of 106 women with a mean age of 49 were examined. Some 94.3% were classified as having invasive ductal carcinomas and the mean tumour diameter at the time of diagnosis was 2.8 cm. Some 50.9% of cases were ER positive and 47.2% were PR positive. P53 expression was positive in 48.1% of the cases. According to the IHC results, only 8.5% of the patients were Her2/neu positive. Ki67 was positive in 66 (62.3%) with a significant relation to lower age (p=0.0229) and P53 positivity (p=0.005). After an average of 40-months follow up, 13 (12.3%) demonstrated recurrence, most commonly systemic. Of 13 cases with relapse, 10 patients (77%) were Ki67 positive. Conclusions: In our population Ki67 appeared to be an independent prognostic factor for three-year survival. However, we stress that a survival study with a bigger sample size would help to support this conclusion.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.557-563
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• 2004

A new vacuum assisted auto-lancing technique is proposed to minimize pain. Specially designed lancing device was introduced, which applied -100mmHg right after skin puncture on the forearm. Sampled blood volumes were measured in 58 normal females. Mean volume of 464 samples was approximately 2.6$\muL$ and the frequency of more than 0.5$\muL$ was 86%. Thus the success rate of blood sugar test should also be the same when using modern glucose meters capable of testing with only 0.3~0.5$\muL$ of capillary blood. When pain scores were quantitatively evaluated by the visual pain measure, only 23% pain of the traditional finger sampling was experienced, demonstrating that capillary blood sampling was performed on the forearm with almost no pain. The present technique reduced pain to a great degree, though resampling might be unavoidable due to 14% of test failure rate estimated for modern glucose meters. However, minimized pain makes the present technique of great convenience for diabetic patients who need blood sampling a few times a day.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.271-298
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• 1998

During these days of new understanding, western medicine has developed remarkably and a revaluation of traditional medicine has been achieved. This appears to have resulted from the sound criticisms of what western medicine has achieved up to now; excessive subdivisions of clinical medicine, severe toxicity of chemical drugs, lack of understanding about patients complaints which cannot be understood objectively, and etc. It is thought that the role of traditional medicine will be more important in the future than it is now. Someone said that the research methods of traditional medicine depends on the way of experimental science too much. That there was no consideration of a system for traditional medicine and the critic also went so far as to assert that in some cases the characteristics of eastern ideas is to permit irrationalism itself. In view of this thinking, the term traditional medicine seems to have been used somewhat too vaguely. However, traditional medicine is a medical treatment which has existed since before the appearance of modern medicine and it was formed from a traditional culture with a long history. One form of traditional medicine, oriental medicine based upon ancient Chinese medicine, was received in such countries as Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Tibet, and Mongolia. Oriental medicine then developed in accordance with its own environment, race, national characteristics, and history. Although there are some simultaneous differences between them, three nations in Eastern Asia; Korea, Japan, and China, have especially similar features in their clinical prescriptions and medical literature. These three nations are trying to understand each others unique traditional medicines through numerous exchanges. Even though many differences in their ways of studying have developed over history exist, recent academic discussions have been made to explore new ways into oriental medicine. Therefore a comparative study of oriental medicine has gradually been thought to be more important. In Korea the formation of a new future-oriented paradigm for oriental medicine is being demanded. The purpose of the new paradigm is to create a new recognition of traditional culture which creates an understanding of oriental medicine to replace the diminished understanding of oriental medicine that was brought about by the self-denial of traditional culture in modem history and cultural collisions between oriental and occidental points of view. Therefore, to make a new paradigm for oriental medicine which is suitable for these days, and fortifies the merit of oriental medicine while compensating its defects, the author has compared the characteristics of oriental medicines in Korea, Japan, and China. The conclusions of this research are as follows: 1. The fundamental differences of the traditional medicines of these three nations are caused by the differences in the systems of Naekyung and Sanghannon. 2. The pattern-identification of illnesses is generally divided into two categories; the pattern identification of Zang-Fu and the pattern identification of prescription. 3. There are many differences in the definition of terms, such as Yin and Yang, Deficiency and Excess, and etc. 4. Chinese traditional medicine has some new concepts about pattern identification and epidemic febrile disease. 5. Japanese traditional medicine has some characteristics about pattern identification of the whole bodys condition and signs of abdominal palpation. 6. In terms of the effects of herbal drugs, Chinese traditional medicine attaches great importance to the experiential efficacy of the herb, and Japanese traditional medicine is taking a serious view of the effects of experimental medical actions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Tobacco Science
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.56-61
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• 2013

Bryonia alba L. belongs to the Cucurbitaceae family and grows in Europe, Asia, America, Africa, Russia, Ukraina and Armenia. The root of Bryonia alba has been used for neuropsychical diseases, psychosis, hysteria, paralysis, epilepsy, vertigo, headache, migrain, melancholia, forgetfulness, sadness, absent mindedness, delirium, cardiovascular disease, ischemia, gastrointestinal diseases, gastric ulcer and respiratory diseases. The root of Bryonia alba contains an oxidized tetra cyclic triterpens, cucurbitaceous, polyunsaturated hydrocarbons, phospholipids, phosphatidylcholines, ethereal oils, fatty acids, a great amount of amino acids, alcohol soluble enzymes, sugar, carotene, vitamin C and E. Bryonia alba increases coronary blood-flow and the amplitude of cardiac contractions. Bryonia alba has an antistressor action and increases the working capacity. Bryonia alba activates connective tissue cells. Bryonia alba markedly increases the oxygen consumption by young and senescent rat brain, liver as well as heart mitochondrial fraction as Korean Ginseng. Bryonia alba decreases lipid peroxidation after immobilization stress. In conclusion, Bryonia alba like Ginseng used in traditional medicine came from ancient time has a good perspective administration as prophylactic and medical remedy, as remedy of lot of diseases in modern medicine.