Trend of multidrug and fluoroquinolone resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from 2010 to 2014 in Korea: a multicenter study

BACKGROUND/AIMS@#This study was conducted to evaluate the recent prevalence and trend of anti-tuberculosis (TB) drug resistance with a focus on multidrug-resistance (MDR) and fluoroquinolone resistance in South Korea.@*METHODS@#We retrospectively reviewed the drug susceptibility testing results of culture-confirmed Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates collected from 2010 to 2014 at seven tertiary hospitals in South Korea.@*RESULTS@#A total of 5,599 cases were included: 4,927 (88.0%) were new cases and 672 (12.0%) were previously treated cases. The MDR rate has significantly decreased from 6.0% in 2010 to 3.0% in 2014 among new cases, and from 28.6% in 2010 to 18.4% in 2014 among previously treated cases (p < 0.001 and p = 0.027, respectively). The resistance rate to any fluoroquinolone was 0.8% (43/5,221) in non-MDR-TB patients, as compared to 26.2% (99/378) in MDR-TB patients (p < 0.001). There was no significant change in the trend of fluoroquinolone resistance among both nonMDR-TB and MDR-TB patients. Among the 43 non-MDR-TB patients with fluoroquinolone resistance, 38 (88.4%) had fluoroquinolone mono-resistant isolates.@*CONCLUSIONS@#The prevalence of MDR-TB has significantly decreased from 2010 to 2014. The prevalence of fluoroquinolone resistance among non-MDR-TB patients was low, but the existence of fluoroquinolone mono-resistant TB may be a warning on the widespread use of fluoroquinolone in the community.

Electromyography-signal-based muscle fatigue assessment for knee rehabilitation monitoring systems

This study suggested a new EMG-signal-based evaluation method for knee rehabilitation that provides not only fragmentary information like muscle power but also in-depth information like muscle fatigue in the field of rehabilitation which it has not been applied to. In our experiment, nine healthy subjects performed straight leg raise exercises which are widely performed for knee rehabilitation. During the exercises, we recorded the joint angle of the leg andEMGsignals from four prime movers of the leg: rectus femoris (RFM), vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, and biceps femoris (BFLH). We extracted two parameters to estimate muscle fatigue from the EMG signals, the zero-crossing rate (ZCR) and amplitude of muscle tension (AMT) that can quantitatively assess muscle fatigue from EMG signals. We found a decrease in the ZCR for the RFM and the BFLH in the muscle fatigue condition for most of the subjects. Also, we found increases in theAMT for the RFM and the BFLH. Based on the results, we quantitatively confirmed that in the state of muscle fatigue, the ZCR shows a decreasing trend whereas theAMT shows an increasing trend. Our results show that both the ZCR and AMT are useful parameters for characterizing the EMG signals in the muscle fatigue condition. In addition, our proposed methods are expected to be useful for developing a navigation system for knee rehabilitation exercises by evaluating the two parameters in two-dimensional parameter space.

A Case of Hemangioma in the External Auditory Canal with Pulsatile Tinnitus / 대한이비인후과학회지

Hemangiomas are relatively common in the head and neck region, but their occurrence in the temporal bone are extremely rare. The hemangioma of the external auditory canal (EAC) is a rare otologic entity as only 22 cases of hemangioma of the EAC have been reported worldwide. Here we report a patient presenting with pulsatile tinnitus, which turned out to be caused by capillary hemangioma arising from the posterior medial portion of external auditory canal touching the tympanic membrane. Surgical excision of the tumor was successful. The clinical manifestations and management of benign vascular lesions of the EAC are discussed with a review of literature.