Genomic Analysis of Monkeypox Virus During the 2023 Epidemic in Korea

We aimed to characterize the genomes of monkeypox virus isolates from the Far East, providing insights into viral transmission and evolution. Genomic analysis was conducted on 8 isolates obtained from patients with monkeypox virus disease in the Republic of Korea between May 2022 and early 2023. These isolates were classified into Clade IIb. Distinct lineages, including B.1.1, A.2.1, and B.1.3, were observed in 2022 and 2023 isolates, with only the B.1.3 lineage detected in six isolates of 2023. These genetic features were specific to Far East isolates (the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Taiwan), distinguishing them from the diverse lineages found in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Oceania. In early 2023, the prevalence of the B.1.3 lineage of monkeypox virus identified in six patients with no overseas travel history is considered as an indicator of the potential initiation of local transmission in the Republic of Korea.

Physiological Predictors of Treatment Response to Biofeedback in Patients With Panic Disorder / 정신신체의학

Objectives@#：Biofeedback is a useful non-pharmacological treatment for panic disorder (PD), but no studies have identified physiological markers related to the treatment response. This study investigated predictors of the treatment response for biofeedback in patients with PD. @*Methods@#：A retrospective study based on the electronic medical records of 372 adult patients with PD was performed. Patients received biofeedback treatment at least once, and physiological markers including heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, skin conductance, skin temperature, and electromyography were collected before the treatment began. The patients were classified as responders or non-responders based on the change inClinical Global Impression-Severity (CGI-S) score. @*Results@#：The response rate to biofeedback treatment was 30.4%. Multivariable logistic regression analysis revealed that a higher CGI-S score at baseline and fewer benzodiazepine prescriptions were associated with a better response to biofeedback treatment. According to subgroup analyses, the baseline CGI-S score, dose of benzodiazepines, and skin conductance are candidate predictors of the response to biofeedback treatment in men, while only baseline disease severity was associated with the treatment response in women. @*Conclusions@#：The present results suggest that skin conductance may be target marker and predictor for biofeedback in male patients with PD.

The First Case of Monkeypox in the Republic of Korea

A rapid outbreak of monkeypox is ongoing in non-endemic countries since May 2022. We report the first case of monkeypox in the Republic of Korea. This occurred in a 34-year-old male patient who traveled to Europe in June 2022. On the day of his return to the Republic of Korea (June 21, 2022), the patient presented with a genital lesion. The results of the monkeypox real-time polymerase chain reaction tests were positive in the penile ulcer, oropharyngeal and nasopharyngeal specimens. The patient subsequently developed fever and skin rash after hospital admission. Careful history taking along physical examination should be conducted in the patients who have epidemiologic risk factors for monkeypox. Moreover, appropriate specimens should be obtained from lesions and tested for the monkeypox virus.

Factors Affecting Musculoskeletal Symptoms among Korean Farmers: Focusing on the Sociodemographic Characteristics / 農村醫學 地域保健

Objectives@#The purpose of this study was to analyze the factors affecting work-related musculoskeletal symptoms in farmers. @*Methods@#In order to examine the factors affecting the musculoskeletal symptoms among farmers, data of ‘Occupational Disease Survey for Farmers’ was performed by the RDA(Rural Development Administration). @*Results@#The odds ratio of work-related musculoskeletal symptoms among female farmers were 1.42(1.30-1.56) times higher than male farmers. The older aging and longer the agricultural work period, the higher odds ratio of musculoskeletal symptoms was shown. By major crops, all crop farmers showed higher odds ratio of musculoskeletal symptoms compared to rice crop farmers. As a result of examining the effective factors on the odds ratio of musculoskeletal symptoms by body parts, female farmers had higher odds ratio of musculoskeletal symptoms than male farmers by 1.38(1.26-1.51) times in waist, 1.58(1.44-1.74) times in knee, 1.32(1.05-0.67) times in hand/wrist, and 1.30(1.06-1.59) times in foot/ankle.By crops, animal husbandry farmers had higher odds ratio of musculoskeletal symptoms than rice crop farmers by 1.44(0.89-2.35) times in waist, and field crop farmers were 1.37(1.07-1.77) times higher in knee. Compared with rice crop farmers, odds ratio of the shoulder part the shoulder parts were 1.19(0.81-1.76) times higher in greenhouse crop farmers and 1.16(0.97-1.38) times higher in dry field crop farmers. Odds ratio of the hands/wrist parts were higher odds ratio of musculoskeletal symptoms than rice crop farmers by 1.69(1.00-2.87) times in greenhouse crop farmers. @*Conclusions@#The results of this study would help to select the group that needs to be managed first, and could be used as basic data for the development of customized musculoskeletal disorders prevention programs.

Relationship Between the Loudness Dependence of the Auditory Evoked Potential and the Severity of Suicidal Ideation in Patients with Major Depressive Disorder

Objective@#The loudness dependence of the auditory evoked potential (LDAEP) is a reliable indicator that is inversely related to central serotonergic activity, and recent studies have suggested an association between LDAEP and suicidal ideation. This study investigated differences in LDAEP between patients with major depressive disorder and high suicidality and those with major depressive disorder and low suicidality compared to healthy controls. @*Methods@#This study included 67 participants: 23 patients with major depressive disorder with high suicidality (9 males, mean age 29.3 ± 15.7 years, total score of SSI-BECK ≥ 15), 22 patients with major depressive disorder with low suicidality (9 males, mean age 42.2 ± 14.4 years, total score of SSI-BECK ≤ 14), and 22 healthy controls (11 males, mean age 31.6 ± 8.7 years). Participants completed the following assessments: Patient Health Questionnaire-9, Beck Depression Inventory-II, Beck Scale for Suicidal ideation, State Anxiety Scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, and LDAEP (measured at electrode Cz). @*Results@#There were no sex-related differences among groups (p = 0.821). The high-suicidality group exhibited significantly higher LDAEP compared to the low-suicidality group (0.82 ± 0.79 vs. 0.26 ± 0.36, p = 0.014). No significant differences were found between the control and high-suicidality (p = 0.281) or the control and low-suicidality groups (p = 0.236). @*Conclusion@#LDAEP was applied to demonstrate the association between serotonergic activity and suicidal ideation and suicide risk in major depression and may be a candidate of biological marker for preventing suicide in this study.

Reciprocal Prediction between Impulsivity and Problematic Internet Use among North Korean Refugee Youths in South Korea by Gender and Adverse Childhood Experience

Objective@#North Korean refugee youths are at higher risk of developing a wide array of psychosocial sequelae, including increased impulsivity and problematic internet use. We aimed to identify reciprocal temporal relationships by performing autoregressive cross-lagged modeling and to examine how these relations differ by gender and adverse childhood experience. @*Methods@#We used the follow-up data of 108 North Korean refugee youths in South Korea over a 1-year period. The Barratt Impulsivity Scale-Brief and Young’s Internet Addiction Test were used to assess impulsivity and problematic internet use, respectively. @*Results@#Autoregressive effects were significant across all groups, indicating that impulsivity and problematic internet use were stable across time; however, prospective prediction of problematic internet use from impulsivity was not significant across all groups. Problematic internet use at baseline positively predicted impulsivity at after 1 year of follow up in only males and individuals with adverse childhood experience. @*Conclusion@#Our findings suggest that the negative effect of problematic internet use (i.e., increased impulsivity) among North Korean refugee youths may be more profound in males and those with adverse childhood experience. We present possible explanations for these findings and discuss the implications for targeted interventions.

Relationship Between the Loudness Dependence of the Auditory Evoked Potential and the Severity of Suicidal Ideation in Patients with Major Depressive Disorder

Objective@#The loudness dependence of the auditory evoked potential (LDAEP) is a reliable indicator that is inversely related to central serotonergic activity, and recent studies have suggested an association between LDAEP and suicidal ideation. This study investigated differences in LDAEP between patients with major depressive disorder and high suicidality and those with major depressive disorder and low suicidality compared to healthy controls. @*Methods@#This study included 67 participants: 23 patients with major depressive disorder with high suicidality (9 males, mean age 29.3 ± 15.7 years, total score of SSI-BECK ≥ 15), 22 patients with major depressive disorder with low suicidality (9 males, mean age 42.2 ± 14.4 years, total score of SSI-BECK ≤ 14), and 22 healthy controls (11 males, mean age 31.6 ± 8.7 years). Participants completed the following assessments: Patient Health Questionnaire-9, Beck Depression Inventory-II, Beck Scale for Suicidal ideation, State Anxiety Scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, and LDAEP (measured at electrode Cz). @*Results@#There were no sex-related differences among groups (p = 0.821). The high-suicidality group exhibited significantly higher LDAEP compared to the low-suicidality group (0.82 ± 0.79 vs. 0.26 ± 0.36, p = 0.014). No significant differences were found between the control and high-suicidality (p = 0.281) or the control and low-suicidality groups (p = 0.236). @*Conclusion@#LDAEP was applied to demonstrate the association between serotonergic activity and suicidal ideation and suicide risk in major depression and may be a candidate of biological marker for preventing suicide in this study.

Reciprocal Prediction between Impulsivity and Problematic Internet Use among North Korean Refugee Youths in South Korea by Gender and Adverse Childhood Experience

Objective@#North Korean refugee youths are at higher risk of developing a wide array of psychosocial sequelae, including increased impulsivity and problematic internet use. We aimed to identify reciprocal temporal relationships by performing autoregressive cross-lagged modeling and to examine how these relations differ by gender and adverse childhood experience. @*Methods@#We used the follow-up data of 108 North Korean refugee youths in South Korea over a 1-year period. The Barratt Impulsivity Scale-Brief and Young’s Internet Addiction Test were used to assess impulsivity and problematic internet use, respectively. @*Results@#Autoregressive effects were significant across all groups, indicating that impulsivity and problematic internet use were stable across time; however, prospective prediction of problematic internet use from impulsivity was not significant across all groups. Problematic internet use at baseline positively predicted impulsivity at after 1 year of follow up in only males and individuals with adverse childhood experience. @*Conclusion@#Our findings suggest that the negative effect of problematic internet use (i.e., increased impulsivity) among North Korean refugee youths may be more profound in males and those with adverse childhood experience. We present possible explanations for these findings and discuss the implications for targeted interventions.

Application of Text-Classification Based Machine Learningin Predicting Psychiatric Diagnosis

Objectives@#ZZThe aim was to find effective vectorization and classification models to predict a psychiatric diagnosis from text-basedmedical records. @*Methods@#ZZElectronic medical records (n = 494) of present illness were collected retrospectively in inpatient admission notes withthree diagnoses of major depressive disorder, type 1 bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. Data were split into 400 training data and 94 independentvalidation data. Data were vectorized by two different models such as term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF)and Doc2vec. Machine learning models for classification including stochastic gradient descent, logistic regression, support vectorclassification, and deep learning (DL) were applied to predict three psychiatric diagnoses. Five-fold cross-validation was used to find aneffective model. Metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score were measured for comparison between the models. @*Results@#ZZFive-fold cross-validation in training data showed DL model with Doc2vec was the most effective model to predict the diagnosis(accuracy = 0.87, F1-score = 0.87). However, these metrics have been reduced in independent test data set with final workingDL models (accuracy = 0.79, F1-score = 0.79), while the model of logistic regression and support vector machine with Doc2vec showedslightly better performance (accuracy = 0.80, F1-score = 0.80) than the DL models with Doc2vec and others with TF-IDF. @*Conclusions@#ZZThe current results suggest that the vectorization may have more impact on the performance of classification thanthe machine learning model. However, data set had a number of limitations including small sample size, imbalance among the category,and its generalizability. With this regard, the need for research with multi-sites and large samples is suggested to improve the machinelearning models.

Application of Text-Classification Based Machine Learningin Predicting Psychiatric Diagnosis

Objectives@#ZZThe aim was to find effective vectorization and classification models to predict a psychiatric diagnosis from text-basedmedical records. @*Methods@#ZZElectronic medical records (n = 494) of present illness were collected retrospectively in inpatient admission notes withthree diagnoses of major depressive disorder, type 1 bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. Data were split into 400 training data and 94 independentvalidation data. Data were vectorized by two different models such as term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF)and Doc2vec. Machine learning models for classification including stochastic gradient descent, logistic regression, support vectorclassification, and deep learning (DL) were applied to predict three psychiatric diagnoses. Five-fold cross-validation was used to find aneffective model. Metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score were measured for comparison between the models. @*Results@#ZZFive-fold cross-validation in training data showed DL model with Doc2vec was the most effective model to predict the diagnosis(accuracy = 0.87, F1-score = 0.87). However, these metrics have been reduced in independent test data set with final workingDL models (accuracy = 0.79, F1-score = 0.79), while the model of logistic regression and support vector machine with Doc2vec showedslightly better performance (accuracy = 0.80, F1-score = 0.80) than the DL models with Doc2vec and others with TF-IDF. @*Conclusions@#ZZThe current results suggest that the vectorization may have more impact on the performance of classification thanthe machine learning model. However, data set had a number of limitations including small sample size, imbalance among the category,and its generalizability. With this regard, the need for research with multi-sites and large samples is suggested to improve the machinelearning models.

Prevalence of DSM-IV Major Psychiatric Disorders among North Korean Defectors in South Korea

Objective@#The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of major psychiatric disorders among North Korean defectors (NKD) settled in South Korea. @*Methods@#The study population consisted of 294 North Korean defectors, aged 18 to 64 years settled in South Korea for 3 years or less. Between June 1, 2016 and October 31, 2016, face-to-face interviews were conducted using the North Korean version of the WHO-Composite International Diagnostic Interview (NK-CIDI) to diagnose DSM-IV psychiatric disorders. @*Results@#The lifetime prevalence of any DSM-IV psychiatric disorders was 62.2% in NKD and 25.0% in the general Korean population. The prevalence of specific disorders in NKD and general Korean population was as follows: 22.3% and 4.9% for major depressive disorder (MDD), 12.2% and 1.4% for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 18.0% and 4.8% for nicotine dependence, and 14.5% and 11.2% for alcohol abuse. The incidence of every single psychiatric disorder varied in each country. For instance, the generalized anxiety disorder, specific phobia, and alcohol use disorder occurred more frequently in North Korea whereas PTSD was more prevalent in other countries. @*Conclusion@#The prevalence of psychiatric disorders among NKD was quite higher than in the general population of South Korea.

Beliefs about Tic Disorders and Tourette's Syndrome in South Korea: An Online Panel Survey

OBJECTIVES: This study investigates lay beliefs about the etiology and treatments of tic disorder and Tourette's syndrome, as well as identifying sociodemographic and personality variables affecting these beliefs among South Koreans. METHODS: In total, 673 participants (mean age 41.77±12.03 years) completed an online survey regarding their beliefs about tic disorder and Tourette's syndrome. The factors related to their lay beliefs about the disorders were analyzed, and the correlates were investigated. RESULTS: Results indicated that lay people in South Korea held strong beliefs that the causes of tic disorder and Tourette's syndrome lie within the parenting/psychological and neurological/biological categories, compared to the dietary/environmental one. Among the sociodemographic variables, sex, age, and levels of subjective mental health knowledge were primarily associated with the aforementioned beliefs. Familiarity with tic disorder and Tourette's syndrome was also associated with these beliefs. Among the personality traits investigated, extraversion and conscientiousness had significant influences on the beliefs people had about tic disorder and Tourette's syndrome. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that both policy makers and mental health service providers should adopt a strategic approach for developing and implementing health education interventions about tic disorder and Tourette's syndrome because individual sociodemographic variables, familiarity with the disorders, and personality traits are all associated with the beliefs about these disorders.

The Mental Health of Ethnic Minority Youths in South Korea and Its Related Environmental Factors: A Literature Review

OBJECTIVES: With increasing concerns for the rapidly growing minority population in South Korea, this literature review addressed a range of mental health risks among multiethnic youths (MY) in South Korea by 1) comparing mental health outcomes with those of native-born youths and 2) identifying multiple layers of relevant environmental factors, from family and school relationships to culture. METHODS: We reviewed 54 studies that fulfilled specific inclusion criteria. RESULTS: Multiple common risk/protective factors, including family separation, family relationship quality, parental socioeconomic and mental health status, social relationships at school, and cultural acceptance, were noted. CONCLUSION: In general, empirical evidence indicates that minority youths have relatively heightened risks for emotional and behavioral problems. Future studies must elucidate the complex interplay between multiple risk and protective factors and the long-term adaptation and mental health service utilization of MY.

Microbubbles used for contrast enhanced ultrasound and theragnosis: a review of principles to applications

Ultrasound was developed several decades ago as a useful imaging modality, and it became the second most popular diagnostic tool due to its non-invasiveness, real-time capabilities, and safety. Additionally, ultrasound has been used as a therapeutic tool with several therapeutic agents and in nanomedicine. Ultrasound imaging is often used to diagnose many types of cancers, including breast, stomach, and thyroid cancers. In addition, ultrasound-mediated therapy is used in cases of joint inflammation, rheumatoid arthritis, and osteoarthritis. Microbubbles, when used as ultrasound contrast agents, can act as echo-enhancers and therapeutic agents, and they can play an essential role in ultrasound imaging and ultrasound-mediated therapy. Recently, various types of ultrasound contrast agents made of lipid, polymer, and protein shells have been used. Air, nitrogen, and perfluorocarbon are usually included in the core of the microbubbles to enhance ultrasound imaging, and therapeutic drugs are conjugated and loaded onto the surface or into the core of the microbubbles, depending on the purpose and properties of the substance. Many research groups have utilized ultrasound contrast agents to enhance the imaging signal in blood vessels or tissues and to overcome the blood–brain barrier or blood-retina barrier. These agents are also used to help treat diseases in various regions or systems of the body, such as the cardiovascular system, or as a cancer treatment. In addition, with the introduction of targeted moiety and multiple functional groups, ultrasound contrast agents are expected to have a potential future in ultrasound imaging and therapy. In this paper, we briefly review the principles of ultrasound and introduce the underlying theory, applications, limitations, and future perspectives of ultrasound contrast agents.