• Childhood Kidney Diseases
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.75-80
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• 2017

Purpose: To investigate the frequency, presentation, management, and outcome of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection in pediatric patients who underwent renal transplantation. Methods: We performed a retrospective chart review of 70 patients under the age of 18, who underwent renal transplantation between January 1990 and November 2014. A diagnosis of CMV infection was based on serology, molecular assays, antigenemia assays, and culture. CMV infection was defined as detection of virus and CMV disease was diagnosed when clinical signs and symptoms were present. Results: The number of patients with CMV infection was 18 (25.7% of renal transplant recipients). Twelve were male (66.7%), and the $mean{\pm}standard$ deviation (SD) age at infection was $13.3{\pm}3.9$ years. Median time of infection after renal transplantation was 4 months (range 1.0-31.0 months). Pretransplantation CMV status in the infected group was as follows: donor (D)+/recipient (R)+, 11 (61.1%); D+/R-, 7 (38.9%); D-/R+, 0; and D-/R- 0. Nine patients had CMV disease with fever, leukopenia, thrombocytopenia, or organ involvement such as enteritis, hepatitis, and pneumonitis. The age of disease occurrence was $13.1{\pm}3.9$ years and the median time to disease onset after renal transplantation was 8 months (range 1.0-31.0). Immunosuppressive agents were reduced or discontinued in 14 patients (77.8%), antiviral agents were used in 11 patients (61.1%), and all patients with CMV infection were controlled. Conclusions: A quarter of the patients had CMV infection about 4 months after renal transplantation. CMV infection was successfully treated with reduction of immunosuppressants or with antiviral agents.

• Journal of Sericultural and Entomological Science
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.63-68
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• 1975

Flacherie of all other silkworm diseases greatly affects cocoon crop as it is far-reaching and wide spreading. Fleacherie which kills silkworms caused by bacteria can be classified as bacterial digestive organ disease, and "Sotto" disease. Bacterial digestive organ disease is caused by the bacteria living in the silkworms alementary canal and a majority of flacherie belongs to this disease. Septicemia is caused by bacterias breeding in silkworms body fluid but its attach is comparatively limited during the larva period. "Sotto" disease is caused by eating mulberry leaves infected with bacteria which produce toxin and silkworms are intoxicated and killed by the toxin. The cause of flacherie is mainly due to a poor environment. The unclean and unsanitary silkworm rearing beds help bacterias breeding and bacteria enter silkworms body through mouth organ or skin. The present study is to investigate various causes of flacherie by means of pulverization of silkworm. Filtrated fluid is extracted by centrifuge and hypodermic of peroral inoculation-is given to young and medium silkworms of spring and autumn. The gained results of the experiment are summarized as follows： 1. Silkworms infected with flacherie were pulverized and their filtrated fluid was extracted by centrifuge and inspected under microscope to find polyhedron from the fluid. 2. The experimenting group of peroral inoculation. a) From the third day of peroral inoculation silkworms appetite generally decreased and ate less compared with the control group. b) After 7 days of the inoculation silkworms suffered from empty head, loose bowels and fainting. c) Some of the silkworms still ate but as were shown in Fig. 3 and 4 some dwarfish silkworms were found. d) There was no remarkable difference between 1st and 2nd instar inoculation groups. e) There was a tendency that the number of diseased silkworms was decerased as the increase of instars. 2. The experimental group of hypodermic inoculation a) Both of 3rd and 4th instar inoculation groups showed no remarkable singularity and the number of diseased silkworms decreased. b) The rate of diseased silkworms was comparatively low because the body fluid was acidy or toxin was hard soluble. Hypodermic inoculation could not give much harm to the silkworms compared to peroral inoculation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Applied Pharmacology
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• 1997.04a
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• pp.119-119
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• 1997

Valacyclovir is a L-valyl ester prodrug of acyclovir which is a highly effective and selective antiviral agent in the treatment of herpes virus diseases. Valacyclovir is rapidly and almost completely converted to acyclovir and increases the oral bioavailability of acyclovir three to five fold. However, the intestinal absorption mechanism of valacyclovir is not clear. If the improved absorption mechanism of valacyclovir is fully understood, it will provide a rationale of designing the amino acid ester prodrugs of polar drugs containing hydroxyl group. The main objective of our present study is to characterize the membrane transport mechanism of valacyclovir. Methods : Intestinal absorption of valacyclovir was investigated by using in-situ rat perfusion study and its wall permeability was estimated by modified boundary layer model. The membrane transport mechanism was also investigated through the uptake study in Caco-2 cells and in CHO-hPepTl cells. Results : In the rat perfusion study, the wall permeability of valacyclovir was ten times higher than acyclovir and showed concentration dependency, Valacyclovir also demonstrated a D,L stereo-selectivity with L-isomer having an approximately five-fold higher permeability than D-isomer. Mixed dipeptides and cephalexin, which are transported by dipeptide carriers, strongly competed with valacyclovir for the intestinal absorption, while L-valine did not show any competition with valacyclovir. This indicated that the intestinal absorption of valacyclovir could be dipeptide carrier-mediated. In addition, the competitive uptake study in Caco-2 cells presented that dipeptides reduced the valacyclovir uptake but valine did not. Also, in IC$\sub$50/ study, valacyclovir showed strong inhibition on the $^3$H-gly-sar uptake in CHO-hPepTl cells over-expressing a human intestinal peptide transporter. Taken together, the result from our present study indicated that valacyclovir utilized the peptide transporter for the intestinal absorption.

• Journal of fish pathology
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.97-101
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• 2020

Although aquaculture production rates grown over the years, aquatic animal diseases occur every year which causes substantial economic losses. When an aquatic animal is infected with an aquatic animal pathogen it is either incinerated or buried according to the aquatic life disease control act. Although these methods prevent the spread of disease, it is not environment friendly. Here, we developed an aquatic animal rendering equipment for disposal of fish waste which is environment-friendly and efficient. Also, fertilizer components of fish waste were evaluated value for recycling. The mobile rendering equipment was designed for field operation and/or high temperature and pressure system, oil and water separator, and shredding drying apparatus. During the experiment (July-2016 to November-2016), a total of 53,824 kg fish waste was collected, and 29,216 kg compost of rendering by-product was made. Also, compost made from viral (Viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus) infected fish did not reflect any detectable pathogen. The concentration of nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic matter in the fish waste compost were 2.17%, 26.98%, and 92.44%, respectively. The results suggest that fish waste used in this study was decomposed efficiently as per the official standard for fertilizer product. This equipment can be useful for efficient inactivation of the aquatic animal pathogenic agents and recycling of the fish waste in an environment-friendly manner.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1304-1309
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• 2005

The production of therapeutic proteins for human diseases in plants results in many economic benefits, including reduced risk of animal virus contamination, high yields, and reduced production and storage costs. Human cytokines, interleukin-11 (hlL-11) and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (hGM-CSF), cDNAs were introduced into rice or tobacco, using either the maize ubiquitin promoter or the 35S promoter. The primary hIL-11 transgenic rice plants exhibited stunted growth and a sterile phenotype, whereas the hIL-11 transgenic tobacco plants did not. This suggests that hIL-11 expression in rice disrupts the normal growth and development of the plant. The regeneration efficiency of rice calli transformed with hGM-CSF was found to be approximately a quarter of that seen with the hIL-11, suggesting that hGM-CSF expression is more deleterious to the regeneration of rice calli than is hIL-11. However, the surviving hGM-CSF transgenic rice plants exhibited a normal phenotype of growth. Therefore, it appears that only those transgenic rice lines that expressed the human cytokines in small quantities were able to survive the selection process.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.29 no.12
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• pp.2014-2021
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• 2019

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) belongs to the genus Betacoronavirus and causes severe morbidity and mortality in humans especially when infected patients have underlying diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Previously, we demonstrated that MERS-CoV-encoded ORF8b strongly inhibits MDA5- and RIG-I-mediated induction of the interferon beta (IFN-β) promoter activities. Here, we report that ORF8b seemed to regulate MDA5 or RIG-I differentially as protein levels of MDA5 were significantly down-regulated while those of RIG-I were largely unperturbed. In addition, ORF8b seemed to efficiently suppress phosphorylation of IRF3 at the residues of 386 and 396 in cells transfected with RIG-I while total endogenous levels of IRF3 remained largely unchanged. Furthermore, ORF8b was able to inhibit all forms of RIG-I; full-length, RIG-I-1-734, and RIG-I-1-228, the last of which contains only the CARD domains. Taken together, it is tempting to postulate that ORF8b may interfere with the CARD-CARD interactions between RIG-I and MAVS. Further detailed analysis is required to delineate the mechanisms of how ORF8b inhibits the MDA5/RIG-I receptor signaling pathway.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.150-155
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• 2011

It is a very important diagnosis and evalution of Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in Korea where hepatitis B-virus is endemic. Protein induced by vitamin K absence or antagonist II (PIVKA-II) appears to be a useful tumor marker. This study was purposed to investigate usefulness of PIVKA-II in the diagnosis and fallow-up after treatment of HCC. A total of 418 patients were included in 187 patients (44.7%) of HCC, 83 patients (19.9%) of liver cirrhosis, 74 patients (17.7%) of chronic hepatitis and 74 patients (17.7%) of other liver diseases with serum PIVKA-II levels by Hicatch PIVKA-II kit. PIVKA-II level were analysed for difference of groups and the comparison of treatment responses. The sensitivity and specificity of PIVKA-II in the diagnosis of HCC were 80.2%, 87.0% at the cut-off value of 40 mAU/mL. There were statistically significant difference between the HCC and other groups (p<0.001), before and after PIVKA-II levels after treatment in HCC (p<0.001). PIVKA-II can be used as a useful tumor marker for patients with HCC, especially early diagnosis in high risk groups, treatment response assesment and monitoring of recurrence.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.490-497
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• 2004

Although the E. coli heat-labile enterotoxin B subunit (LTB) is known to be a potent mucosal adjuvant towards co-administrated unrelated antigens and immunoregulator in T-helper 1-type-mediated autoimmune diseases, a more efficient and useful LTB is still required for prospective vaccine adjuvants. To determine whether a novel chimeric LTB subunit would produce an enhanced mucosal adjuvant activity and immune response, a number of LTB subunits were genetically fused with chimeric proteins using the epitope genes of the envelope glycoprotein E2 (gp51-54) from the classical swine fever virus (CSFV). It was found that the total serum immunoglobulin (Ig) levels of BALB/c mice orally immunized with chimeric proteins containing an N-terminal linked LTB subunit (LE1, LE2, and LE3) were higher than those of mice immunized with LTB, E2 epitope, and chimeric proteins that contained a C-terminal linked LTB subunit. In particular, immunization with LE1 markedly increased both the total serum Ig and fecal IgA level compared to immunization with LTB or the E2 epitope. Accordingly, the current results demonstrated that the LTB subunit in a chimeric protein exhibited a strong mucosal adjuvant effect as a carrier molecule, while the chimeric protein containing the LTB subunit stimulated the mucosal immune system by mediating the induction of antigen-specific serum Ig and mucosal IgA. Consequently, an LE1-mediated mucosal response may contribute to the development of effective antidiarrhea vaccine adjuvants.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.22
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• pp.9643-9647
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• 2014

Background: Several studies have been performed to investigate the association of the HER2 Ile655Val polymorphism and breast cancer risk. However, the results were inconsistent. To understand the precise relationship, a meta-analysis was here conducted. Materials and Methods: A search of PubMed conducted to investigate links between the HER2 Ile655Val polymorphism and breast cancer, identified a total of 32 studies, of which 29, including 14,926 cases and 15,768 controls, with odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals were used to assess any association. Results: In the overall analysis, the HER2 Ile655Val polymorphism was associated with breast cancer in an additive genetic model (OR=1.136, 95% CI 1.043-1.239, p=0.004) and in a dominant genetic (OR=1.118, 95% CI 1.020-1.227, p=0.018), while no association was found in a recessive genetic model. On subgroup analysis, an association with breast cancer was noted in the additive genetic model (OR=1.111, 95% CI: 1.004-1.230, p=0.042) for the Caucasian subgroup. No significant associations were observed in Asians and Africans in any of the genetic models. Conclusions: In summary, our meta-analysis findings suggest that the HER2 Ile655Val polymorphism is marginally associated with breast cancer susceptibility in worldwide populations with additive and dominant models, but not a recessive model.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.432-442
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• 2020

Diagnostic monitoring in Korean rockfish cages was performed to survey the prevalence of pathogens in cultured Korean rockfish Sebastes schlegeli from May 2013 to July 2016. A total of 1,945 fish samples collected from the western (Cheonsu Bay and Heuksando), southern (Tongyeong and Namhae), and eastern coasts (Pohang) of Korea were tested for parasites, viruses, and bacteria. In this study, 1,264 and 334 fishes were infected with Microcotyle sebastis and Clavinema mariae, respectively. The prevalence rates of C. clavinema in fishes from Cheonsu Bay, Heuksando, and Tongyeong were 35.3%, 3.9% and 1.9%, respectively. No C. clavinema infection was detected in cultured rockfish from Namhae and Pohang. Furthermore, bacteria including Photobacterium damselae (8.9%), Photobacterium piscicola (2.3%), Photobacterium spp. (8.9%), Aeromonas salmonicida (1.8%), Aeromonas spp. (0.9%), Vibrio scophthalmi (1.5%), Vibrio spp. (3.3%), Streptococcus iniae (1.2%), and others (8.0%) were detected in 373 of 1,364 fishes. No virus was detected in any fish investigated in this study.