Study of Dietary Fatty acids, Blood Fatty Acid Composition, and Immune Parameters in Atopic Dermatitis Patients

The prevalence of atopic dermatitis (AD) continues to rise in industrialized countries related to Western lifestyle, including dietary habits, especially imbalance of intake of dietary fatty acids. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the dietary fatty acids and the assess the blood fatty acid composition and immune parameters in AD patients. AD (n = 50) patients and gender.age matched healthy controls (HC) were studied in case-control clinical trail. Current fatty acids intake status was determined by 3-day food record method. Blood sample were collected from 30 subjects in each group and blood fatty acid composition and immune parameters were analysed. AD patients consumed less PUFA and their n-6/n-3 PUFA ratio was higher than that of HC. Both the ratios of PUFA and MUFA were positively correlated with SCORAD in AD patients (p < 0.05). In the AD patients, there were abnormalities in the fatty acid composition of the RBC and WBC, SFA being significantly high and most n-3 PUFA being significantly low. Moreover, both the ratios of EPA and DHA in WBC were negatively correlated with dietary n-6/n-3 PUFA ratio in AD patients (p < 0.05). Serum total IgE and IL-4 levels of AD patients increased significantly compared with the levels of HC (p < 0.01). Ratios of monocyte and eosinophil in WBC of AD patients increased signi-ficantly compared with the levels of HC including total WBC count (p < 0.01), and ratios of lymphocyte and basophil in WBC of AD patients decreased significantly compared with the levels of HC (p < 0.05). Moreover, the ratios of eosinophil in WBC were positively correlated with dietary P/M ratio (p < 0.05), and the ratios of monocyte in WBC were positively correlated with n-6/n-3 PUFA ratio (p < 0.05) in AD patients. This results indicated that AD patients had significantly high intake of dietary n-6/n-3 PUFA compared with HC. Imbalance of intake of dietary fatty acids affected fatty acid compositions in the RBC and WBC, and these lead to immune imbalance and grow worse of AD.

Test-retest Reliability of a Self-Administered Smoking Questionnaire for Middle and High School Students / 한국역학회지

PURPOSE: Since 1988, the annual or biannual survey was conducted by Korean Association of Smoking and Health (KASH) to examine the smoking rate, knowledge and attitude on smoking of students attending middle and high school in Korea. The objective of this study was to investigate the test-retest reliability of self-administered smoking questionnaire for Korean middle and high school students. METHODS: For the test-retest study, we sampled 30 school among 106 schools which participated in annual survey on June of 2002. Among 30 schools, 26 schools (86.7%) were responded for this study. RESULTS: 1) For the subjects of 1st and 2nd surveys, there were no difference on smoking related variable including attitude, knowledge, perceived health status, father's smoking status, friend's smoking status, willingness to smoke, and readiness to quit smoking 2) For middle school students among male, current smoking rates were 3.5% for 1st survey and 3.0% for 2nd survey, which was statistically no significant. For high school students, however, current smoking rate of 1st survey was higher (21.1%) than that of 2nd (18.2%), although the rate was not significantly differed. 3) For middle school students among female, current smoking rates were 1.1% for 1st survey and 3.3% for 2nd survey, which was statistically no significant. Corresponding rate for high school students were 9.8% and 11.4%, respectively. CONCLUSION: The results indicated that smoking questionnaire has been conducted by KASH is reliable for use in estimation for prevalence of smoking for middle and high school students.