Association between History of Pregnancy and Liver Fibrosis Using Fibrosis-4 Index in Korean Postmenopausal Women: A Nationwide Population-Based Study / 가정의학회지

Background@#The association between a history of pregnancy and liver fibrosis remains unclear. Herein, we investigated the association between reproductive factors, including a history of pregnancy and liver fibrosis, in postmenopausal Korean women. @*Methods@#This study used nationally representative, population-based data collected from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2008–2017. Of 14,624 women with natural menopause, 11,085 with no previous history of any type of cancer, hepatitis, or chronic heavy alcohol consumption were enrolled. We investigated the reproductive factors, including a history of pregnancy, total reproductive years, age at menarche and menopause, and oral contraceptive use. Liver fibrosis was defined as a Fibrosis-4 index score ≥2.67 kg/m2. @*Results@#Of the study participants, 372 (3.3%) had advanced liver fibrosis. Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that women with a history of more than one pregnancy were associated with a lower risk of liver fibrosis compared to women who had never been pregnant, after adjusting for potential confounders (adjusted odds ratio, 0.30; 95% confidence interval, 0.15–0.59). The risk of liver fibrosis did not increase significantly with an increasing number of pregnancies (P for trend=0.135). Other reproductive factors, including total reproductive years, age at menopause and menarche, and oral contraceptive use, were not significantly associated with liver fibrosis. @*Conclusion@#Postmenopausal women who had experienced one or more pregnancies had a reduced risk of liver fibrosis. Our findings reveal a potential protective role of pregnancy against liver fibrosis.

Asian Ethnic Group Classification Model Using Data Mining / 대한법의학회지

In addition to identifying genetic differences between target populations, it is also important to determine the impact of genetic differences with regard to the respective target populations. In recent years, there has been an increasing number of cases where this approach is needed, and thus various statistical methods must be considered. In this study, genetic data from populations of Southeast and Southwest Asia were collected, and several statistical approaches were evaluated on the Y-chromosome short tandem repeat data. In order to develop a more accurate and practical classification model, we applied gradient boosting and ensemble techniques. To infer between the Southeast and Southwest Asian populations, the overall performance of the classification models was better than that of the decision trees and regression models used in the past. In conclusion, this study suggests that additional statistical approaches, such as data mining techniques, could provide more useful interpretations for forensic analyses. These trials are expected to be the basis for further studies extending from target regions to the entire continent of Asia as well as the use of additional genes such as mitochondrial genes.