Epidemiological Investigation of Tick Species from Near Domestic Animal Farms and Cattle, Goat, and Wild Boar in Korea

This study aimed to investigate the tick species and give background for tick-borne investigations in Korea. Ticks were collected from the area within 2 km radius of the 4 domestic animal farms, where they were located in mountainous areas and raising animals on pasture, and from animal bodies in 2014 and 2015. In total, 7,973 nymphal and adult ticks were collected from the farms

Outcomes of Left Ventricular Function According to Treatment Response for a Patent Ductus Arteriosus in Preterm Infants

BACKGROUND: To evaluate the outcomes of left ventricular (LV) function according to treatment response for a hemodynamically significant patent ductus arteriosus (hsPDA) in preterm infants. METHODS: Echocardiograms of 21 preterm infants born at gestational age < 31 weeks obtained at term-equivalent age were retrospectively studied. Among preterm infants with a hsPDA, 9 underwent ligation after failure of pharmacological closure (ligation group) and 6 experienced successful pharmacological closure (medication group). Six preterm infants without hsPDA (no-hsPDA group) were studied as controls. LV peak longitudinal systolic strain (ε) of each infant was retrospectively obtained from echocardiograms using velocity vector imaging, along with neonatal outcomes. RESULTS: Pharmacological closures were attempted at postnatal day 2–3. In the ligation group, the median postnatal age at ligation was 20 days. In the ligation group, LV peak longitudinal systolic ε was significantly decreased at term-equivalent age compared to the other groups. Between the medication and no-hsPDA groups, LV peak longitudinal systolic ε did not differ significantly. Among the neonatal outcomes, infants who experienced necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) showed significantly decreased LV peak longitudinal systolic ε compared to the infants who did not experience NEC . CONCLUSION: We speculate that in preterm infants with an hsPDA, in cases of medical treatment failure, early PDA ligation at less than 20 days of postnatal age would be beneficial for preserving LV systolic function.

Lipopolysaccharide-binding protein plasma levels as a biomarker of obesity-related insulin resistance in adolescents / 소아과

PURPOSE: Lipopolysaccharide-binding protein (LBP) is a 65-kDa acute phase protein, derived from the liver, which is present in high concentrations in plasma. Data regarding the association between circulating plasma LBP levels and obesity-related biomarkers in the pediatric population are scarce. We aimed to determine whether there was a difference in plasma LBP levels between overweight/obese and normal-weight adolescents and to assess the correlation of circulating LBP levels with anthropometric measures and obesity-related biomarkers, including insulin resistance, liver enzyme levels, and lipid profiles. METHODS: The study included 87 adolescents aged 12-13 years; 44 were overweight/obese and 43 were of normal-weight. We assessed anthropometric and laboratory measures, including body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, insulin resistance, liver enzyme levels, and lipid profiles. Plasma LBP levels were measured using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. RESULTS: The mean age of the participants was 12.9±0.3 years. Circulating plasma LBP levels were significantly increased in overweight/obese participants compared with those in normal-weight participants (7.8±1.9 µg/mL vs. 6.0±1.6 µg/mL, P<0.001). LBP levels were significantly and positively associated with BMI, systolic blood pressure, aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, total cholesterol, low density lipoprotein-cholesterol, fasting glucose and insulin, and insulin resistance as indicated by the homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) (all P<0.05). In multivariate linear regression analysis, BMI and HOMA-IR were independently and positively associated with plasma LBP levels. CONCLUSION: LBP is an inflammatory biomarker associated with BMI and obesity-related insulin resistance in adolescents. The positive correlation between these parameters suggests a potentially relevant pathophysiological mechanism linking LBP to obesity-related insulin resistance in adolescents.

Acute Hyponatremia With Seizure and Mental Change After Oral Sodium Picosulfate/Magnesium Citrate Bowel Preparation

Sodium picosulfate/magnesium citrate (Picolight Powder), which is used as a bowel preparation for the colon and the rectum, can cause a severe electrolyte imbalance like hyponatremia. When hyponatremia gets severe or occurs rapidly, it can lead to death due to associated complications. We have experienced a case of hyponatremia associated with seizure and loss of consciousness in a 76-year-old woman, who took sodium picosulfate/magnesium citrate as a bowel preparation for colonoscopy. She was taking thiazide and synthroid for the treatment of hypertension and hypothyroidism, respectively, and she had other underlying medical conditions such as a history of seizure and dementia. Following the diagnosis of hyponatremia, we used an intravenous injection of 3% NaCl to normalize the sodium level in her serum, and her associated symptoms soon disappeared.

Inverted-Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy in a Patient with Pulmonary Embolism

As the use of early coronary angiography and echocardiography become widely available in the setting of acute coronary syndrome, the gradual increase for variant forms of transient left ventricular (LV) apical ballooning syndrome have been recognized. This syndrome usually occurs in women and is frequently elicited by an intense emotional, psychological, and physical event. While the patients' characteristics between typical and non-typical LV ballooning syndrome seem to differ, the presentation, clinical features, and reversibility of LV wall motion abnormalities are similar. We present a middle-aged woman who experienced inverted takotsubo cardiomyopathy triggered by pulmonary embolism. To the best of our knowledge, this case is particularly unique and is rarely reported in the disease entity.

Satisfaction and Recognition Level of Environment-Friendly Agricultural Products in Cheongju Area / 대한지역사회영양학회지

The purpose of this study was to investigate basic data on the degree of parents' recognition and satisfaction with the use of environment-friendly agricultural products. The conclusions of this study are as follows. The survey on the use of environment-friendly products in households showed that 68.7% of the respondents used environment-friendly products at home. The frequency of purchasing organic products by household consumers showed that 25.1% of the respondents bought organic products one to two times per week. The most popular items of the environment-friendly agricultural products used were vegetables, comprising 63.9%. The households with more than 3,000,000 won of monthly income tended to consume more domestic livestock products (p < 0.05). In comparison to general agricultural products, environment-friendly agricultural products users showed higher satisfaction level with a better quality in term of safety, quality, nutrition, taste, appearance, diversity and price. The degree of satisfaction with safety was the highest (3.8 +/- 0.68), and price showed the lowest (2.76 +/- 0.79). The degree of parents' recognition of the governmental support for environment-friendly agricultural products showed that those who were aware of the supporting policy were 44.5%, but 55.5% of them didn't know about the fact that 46.6% of the respondents agreed that environment-friendly agricultural products should be used in more than 50% of the foods used for school food service. The respondents pointed out that vegetables (45%) sprayed with pesticide are the most urgent food item that need to be replaced by environment-friendly farm products.

A Study on the Promotion of Adolescent's Milk Consumption (I): Milk Preference and Intake Patterns of Urban Adolescents

In order to study milk preference and intake pattern of adolescents, the questionnaire survey was conducted with 929 middle and high school students residing in Chungnam cities through October and November 2004. Of the subjects, 56.3% liked milk or liked very much. They preferred chocolate and fruit-tasted milk to plain milk. Reasons for liking milk were for health and its taste, while the reasons of disliking were unpleasant smell and stomach upset. However those who disliked milk did like milk products such as ice-cream, yogurt or cheese. Of the students 35.1% drank milk 2 times or more a day, while 11.8% drank milk less than 2-3 times a month. As a whole they drank milk 8.6+/-6.7 times a week, of which 4.3+/-3.1 times for plain milk. Daily intake amount was estimated as 308+/-315mL. Middle-school students and boys drank more milk than high-school students and girls, respectively. Among the students 64.3% used to drink 1 cup of milk at a time, and 58.3% drank only milk without other foods. It was shown that 51.8% took milk school-serviced and their milk intake frequencies were higher than those of who were not given school milk service. Also milk intake frequencies was higher in students whose mother were housewives than in students whose mother had jobs. Milk preference, intake frequency, and one portion size showed significant and positive correlations each other. In conclusion, milk intake level of the subjects was insufficient and unpleasant smell and stomach upset were the main reasons which decreased milk preference and consumption. Students with low milk preference should be guided with how to drink milk deliciously, how to choose milk type and its products. It is also effective to go into school milk service and to provide milk at home anytime. As students like much fruit-tasted and chocolate milk, the milk processing industries should take their nutritional and health benefits into considerations importantly.

A Study on the Promotion of Adolescent's Milk Consumption (II): Relationships of Adolescent's Milk Intake Frequency with Food Attitude, Snacking Frequency, Physical Activity and School Vending Facilities

In order to investigate the ecological factors affecting milk intake frequency of adolescents, the questionnaire survey was conducted with 929 middle and high school students living in Chungnam urban area through October and November 2004. The subjects consumed milk 8.6+/-6.7 times per week, other beverages 4.4+/-4.1 times per week and drinking water 3.7+/-2.1 cups per day. Of the students 77.3% took balanced meals, 72.8% ate regularly and 36.2% ate adequate amount. About 61% had breakfast everyday and nearly a half students snacked once a day. Nutritional knowledge scores about milk was 7.2+/-1.7 and milk attitude scores was 28.1+/-6.5. The subjects spent daily 1.8+/-1.1, 1.9+/-1.1, and 1.0+/-0.5 hours for computer use, TV watching and exercise, respectively. Milk intake frequencies were positively correlated with excercise, snack frequency, meal balance and regularity, breakfast frequency, food attitude score and milk preference, while showed negative correlationships with TV watching and computer use. Intake frequency of fruit-tasted and chocolate milk showed inverse correlation with nutritional knowledge. Subjects without either school store or vending machine took milk more frequently than those with one or both did. Of the correlated variables, milk preference was the most important influencing factor to milk intake frequency according to the stepwise linear regression analysis, which presented other 5 important influencing factors as food attitude, school vending facilities, excercise, snacking frequency and watching TV. In conclusion, the improvement of milk preference is the most important and effective way to promote milk consumption in adolescents. The favorite ways of drinking milk, nutritional benefit of milk, healthy beverage and good snacking should be taught in nutrition education. Also physical activities should be recommended to students rather than watching TV, computer use and vending facilities selling soft drinks should be limited to be established inside school.

Beverage Consumption and Related Factors among Adolescents in the Chungnam Urban Area / 대한지역사회영양학회지

In order to investigate the adolescent's beverage drinking pattern and its related ecological factors, a questionnaire survey was conducted with the subjects of 920 middle and high-school students, 450 boys and 470 girls, residing in 4 cities of the Chungnam area. Of the subjects 65% liked, or liked very much, beverages and only 3.7% did not like beverages. They drank beverages 4.3 +/- 4.0 times a week on average, but 10.4% of them drank beverages more than twice a day. Male students drank more frequently than the females. The intake frequency of carbonated drinks was 1.7 +/- 2.3 a week, which was about 40% of the total beverages. However, more students drank mainly ion beverages (33.6%) than carbonated drinks (28.7%). As the students took more balanced food and ate more regularly, their beverage drinking frequency decreased and those taking carbonated drinks also tended to decrease. The more frequent the students took fast food, the more frequent they drank carbonated beverages. The drinking frequencies for beverages or carbonated beverages were also less in students eating cooked rice with sidedishes as breakfast than in students eating others. The drinking frequency for carbonated drinks showed significant correlations with the students' activities such as the time spent using computers and watching TV got longer, the drinking frequency for soft drinks was also higher. When nutritional knowledge was higher, drinking frequency for carbonated drinks got lower. In conclusion, to make the adolescents improve their attitudes toward drinking beverages and to prevent excessive drinking of carbonated drinks, they should be educated not only on the nutritional knowledge and the proper intake of beverages, but also on good dietary habits including balance, regularity, and types of meals. Proper snacking and fast food consumption also should be taught. Since ion beverages were taken more frequently than carbonated drinks among adolescents, further study is recommended on the impact of excessive intake of ion beverages.

Effects of School-based Nutrition Education for Korean Food Guide on Food Intake Frequency of Adolescents / 대한지역사회영양학회지

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of nutrition education about the Korean food guide to middle school students on food intake measured by food frequency. Three hundred first graders were sampled from two coeducational middle schools located in the small city of Chungnam area, and divided into 167 (74 boys, 93 girls) education groups of one school and 133 (70 boys, 63 girls) non education groups of the other school. Nutrition education was given to the education group for a total of 16 hours and no education to the non education group during the same period. After education, average nutrition knowledge scores of education group increased from 6.40 +/- 2.17 to 6.81 +/- 1.56 significantly, especially boys with a high range of increase and girls no increase. Dietary habit scores improved significantly from 46.2 +/- 6.5 to 49.1 +/- 6.2 in both boys and girls of education group. Of the knowledge and dietary habits, ability of choosing a balanced meal, biased eating to some food, and taking diverse foods at every meal improved significantly in education group. In non education group no significant increases of either nutrition knowledge scores and dietary habit scores were shown. In addition education group showed significant increases after education, in the intake frequencies of rice noodle loaf bread, kimchi, green and yellow vegetables, and soybean soybean curds by 0.27, 0.23, 0.40 and 0.32 servings per day, compared with non education group. These changes were greater in girls than in boys. According to these results, it can be concluded that nutrition education about the Korean food guide improved effectively not only student's nutrition knowledge and dietary habits, but also healthy food intake ability. It is necessary to prepare long-term and continuous school-based nutrition education programs for the students to get into a habit of healthy food intake.

Semiquantitative Food Frequency Method as an Epidemiological tool in a Rural community, Korea / 한국역학회지

This study was performed to evaluate the semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire used to obtain information about. dietary patterns of adults in a rural county, Yang-pyeung Gun. The study population was 1311 adults aged 17~85 years. And well-trained interviewers interviewed subjects in 1990, 1992, 1993. The results are as follows. 1) Nutrients intake calculated from each questionnaire showed significant difference, because the number of question was not same(fifty questions in 1990, eighty questions in 1992, 1993). 2) Estimated nutrients intake from separate food items was significantly different when food items are combined in one question. 3) The agreement of nutrients intake level except vit C were high when the subjects are cross-classified by their ranks on the nutrients intake level from items in both questionnaires and on the nutrient intake level from items in each questionnaire. 4) And analysing this study data by multiple stepwise regression, we selected twenty seven food items whic could explained over 85% of inter-individual variation of nutrients(energy, carbohydrate, fat, protein, vit A, vit B1, vit B2, vit C, Ca). From above results, we suggested that it is neccessary to standardize questionnaire and perform validity studies.

Pneumomediastinum, Pneumoperitoneum and Subcutaneous Emphysema without Pneumothorax during Endotrocheal Ventilator Anesthesis / 대한마취과학회지

General endotracheal anesthesia with mechanical ventilator is a common anesthetic practice since introduction of various anesthetic ventilator. A mechanical not only deoreases workload but also allows the anesthesiolosist to better nonitor and manage the patient during the operation. However, acoidental complications can be encountered during the wse of ventilator as with all other modern equipments. Several authors have described that increased pulmonary pleasure from poaitive pressure ventilation mar lead to alveolar rupture with subsequent dissection of air along the vascu- lar structure of the lung into the hilum and then into the tissue plane of the mediastinum. We report a case of pneumomediastinum, pneumoperitoneum and subcutaneous emphysema without pneumothorax which occured during discoidectomy under the endotracheal ventilator anesthesia.