A synophthalmia, another form of cyclopia, in which the element of the two eyes are partially fused to form an apparently single eye in the middle of the forehead. The synophthalmia is a result of complex, neural plate misdevelopment syndrome involving the eye, brain, skull and face. It is well known that synophthalmia is due to heterogenous causes, most of which chromosomal imbalances. We experienced a case of synophthalmia associated with proboscis, alobar holoprosencephaly and chromosomal anomaly 46, XX, -15,t (15 q, 21 q). Diagnosis was confirmed by brain MRI and autopsy, The patient died about 20 hours of age and autopsy was done. A brief review of the literatures was also presented.
Autopsy ; Brain ; Diagnosis ; Forehead ; Holoprosencephaly ; Humans ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Neural Plate ; Skull

No abstract available.
Pregnancy*

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study is to 1) conduct a discrimination analysis of schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder using MMPI profile through artificial neural network analysis and logistic regression analysis, 2) to make a comparison between advantages and disadvantages of the two methods, and 3) to demonstrate the usefulness of artificial neural network analysis of psychiatric data. PROCEDURE: The MMPI profiles for 181 schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder patients were selected. Of these profiles, 50 were randomly placed in the learning group and the remaining 131 were placed in the validation group. The artificial neural network was trained using the profiles of the learning group and the 131 profiles of the validation group were analyzed. A logistic regression analysis was then conducted in a similar manner. The results of the two analyses were compared and contrasted using sensitivity, specificity, ROC curves, and kappa index. RESULTS: Logistic regression analysis and artificial neural network analysis both exhibited satisfactory discriminating ability at Kappa index of greater than 0.4. The comparison of the two methods revealed artificial neural network analysis is superior to logistic regression analysis in its discriminating capacity, displaying higher values of Kappa index, specificity, and AUC(Area Under the Curve) of ROC curve than those of logistic regression analysis. CONCLUSION: Artificial neural network analysis is a new tool whose frequency of use has been increasing for its superiority in nonlinear applications. However, it does possess insufficiencies such as difficulties in understanding the relationship between dependent and independent variables. Nevertheless, when used in conjunction with other analysis tools which supplement it, such as the logistic regression analysis, it may serve as a powerful tool for psychiatric data analysis.
Discrimination (Psychology) ; Humans ; Learning ; Logistic Models* ; MMPI* ; Mood Disorders ; ROC Curve ; Schizophrenia ; Sensitivity and Specificity ; Statistics as Topic

No abstract available.
Induction Chemotherapy* ; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms*

BACKGROUND: Vitiligo is an acquired depigmentary disorder of the skin and hair. The etiology is unknown, however an autoimmune hypothesis is favored. OBJECTIVE: We performed this study to develop a better understanding of the clinical features of vitiligo patients. METHOD: We evaluated clinical manifestations of 1203 vitiligo patients(556 males and 647 females). RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: 1. The mean age of onset and that of the first visits made by patients were 22.9+/-18 and 27.9+/-19 years, respectively. 2. The face(37.4%) was the most common site of initial involvement. In decreasing order of frequency, the common sites of involvement were the face and neck(65.9%), thorax and abdomen(42.9%), upper extremities(42.3%). 44.5% of the cases had the vulgaris type, 26.1% the focal type, and 21.1% the segmental type. During the three months before a visit, 44% of patients experienced progression of disease. Within one year, about 75% of patients reported that the disease had progressed. 3. Precipitating or aggravating factors such as trauma(13.1%), psychological stress(9.2%), sun light (2.8%) and pregnancy(2.5%), were found in 30.9% of patients. Thyroid disease was the most common associated disease.
Age of Onset ; Hair ; Humans ; Male ; Skin ; Solar System ; Thorax ; Thyroid Diseases ; Vitiligo*

The nimodipine, calcium-channel blocker, is known to specific to brain tissue and effect on the ischemic stroke. To evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of nimodipine, we studied the 37 patients with Organic Brain Syndrome(OBS) who admitted to St. Mary's Hospital from January to August, 1989. We followed up for 12 weeks of their 18 items of neurologic outcome. The results and conclusion were as follows: 1) The pretreatment SCAG(Sandoz Clinical Assessment-Geriatric Scale) was used as a base-line measurement and the efficacy of the therapy was evaluated entirely in terms of changes in SCAG after 3, 6, 9 and 12 weeks of treatment. The total score was changed with meaningful improvement(p<0.01). 2) Among the 18 items of symptoms, the confusion, the level of alertness, the memory and the orientation were the area that have showed the most improvement. 3) No effect on heart, blood chemistry or other side effect was noted during medication. 4) We also found that those improvement has no specific relation to age, sex and causes of OBS. These result indicate that nimodipine has a possible therapeutic benefit in patients with OBS, especially who have the symptoms of confusion and impaired recent memory. These result should encouraged us to do further study such as double blind placebo in order to clarify the genuine pharmacological efficacy.
Brain* ; Chemistry ; Heart ; Humans ; Memory ; Nimodipine* ; Stroke

Purpose: Recently, deep learning techniques have been introduced for age estimation, with automated methods based on radiographic analysis demonstrating high accuracy. In this study, we applied convolutional neural network (CNN) techniques to the lower dentition area on orthopantomograms (OPGs) of children to develop an automated age estimation model and evaluate its accuracy for use in forensic dentistry. Methods: In this study, OPGs of 2,856 subjects aged 3-14 years were analyzed. The You Only Look Once (YOLO) V8 object detection technique was applied to extract the mandibular dentition area on OPGs, designating it as the region of interest (ROI). First, 200 radiographs were randomly selected, and were used to train a model for extracting the ROI. The trained model was then applied to the entire dataset. For the CNN image classification task, 80% of OPGs were allocated to the training set, while the remaining 20% were used as the test set. A transfer learning approach was employed using the ResNet50 and VGG19 backbone models, with an ensemble technique combining these models to improve performance. The mean absolute error (MAE) on the test set was used as the validation metric, and the model with the lowest MAE was selected. Results: In this study, the age estimation model developed using mandibular dentition region from OPGs achieved MAE and root mean squared error (RMSE) values of 0.501 and 0.742, respectively, on the test set, and MAE and RMSE values of 0.273 and 0.354, respectively, on the training set. Conclusions The automated age estimation model developed in this study demonstrated accuracy comparable to that of previous research and shows potential for applications in forensic investigations. Increasing the sample size and incorporating diverse deep learning techniques are expected to further enhance the accuracy of future age estimation models.

To estimate the prevalence of hepatitis B virus(HBV) and hepatitis C virus(HCV) infection and to determine associated risk factors, a population-based seroepidemiologic study was carried out. In 1993, a health examination survey of the population was carried out in rural area known to have a high incidence of liver cancer. The study population were those who volunteered to participate in a health survey over 10 years of age. Examinees were interviewed by specially trained staffs. Sera from 1,033 study subjects were tested for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) by reverse passive hemagglutinin (RPHA) estimation and for hepatitis C virus antibody (anti-HCV) by 2nd generation passive hemagglutinin (PHA) estimation, The age and sex standardized prevalence of HBsAg was 6.3% which was similar to national average, but that of anti-HCV was 5.1% which was 4 to 5 times higher than that of blood or other health examinees in Korea. In a multivariate analysis, transfusion history, surgical operative history, and acupuncture history were not associated with HBsAg positivity. In contrast, acupuncture history (adjusted odds ratio[OR]=2.2 : 95% Confidence interval[CI] 1.0-4.7) and surgical operative history(adjusted OR=2.0 : 95% CI 1.0-4.1) were associated with anti-HCV positivity. The present study suggest that there is an highly endemic area of HCV infection in Korea and probably this endemicity is associated with a parenteral source of HCV infection other than blood transfusion.
Acupuncture ; Blood Transfusion ; Health Surveys ; Hemagglutinins ; Hepacivirus ; Hepatitis B Surface Antigens ; Hepatitis B* ; Hepatitis C* ; Hepatitis* ; Incidence ; Korea* ; Liver Neoplasms ; Multivariate Analysis ; Prevalence ; Risk Factors ; Seroepidemiologic Studies*

OBJECTIVES: This study investigated the gene expression profile in basal ganglia of manganese-exposed rats based on cDNA array analysis. METHODS: For cDNA array, 25 male Sprague-Dawley rats (250+/-25 g) were intraperitoneally injected with 25 mg/kg B.W./day of MnCl2 (0.3 ml) for 10 days. For dose-related gene expression analysis, rats were intraperitoneally injected with 0.2, 1.0, and 5.0 mg/kg B.W/day of MnCl2 for 10 days. Control rats were injected with an equal volume of saline. RNA samples were extracted from brain tissue and reversetranscribed in the presence of [alpha32P]-dATP. Membrane sets of the Atlas Rat 1.2 array II and Toxicology array 1.2 kit (Clontech, Palo Alto, CA) were hybridized with cDNA probe sets. Northern blot hybridization method was employed to assess the dose-related gene expression. RESULTS: Fifty-two genes showed significant changes in expression of more than two-fold. Twentyeight were up-regulated and 24 were down-regulated in the manganese-exposed group compared to the control. Among the 52 genes, 28 genes including nuclear factor I-X1 (NF1-X1), neuroligin 2 and 3, mitochondrial stress-70 protein (MTHSP70), neurodegeneration-associated protein 1 (Neurodap1), multidrug resistance protein (MDR), and endoplasmic reticulum stress protein 72 (ERP72), were reported for the first time related to the manganese-induced neurotoxic-metabolism in the rat basal ganglia. According to the dose-related gene expression analyses, MTHSP70, Neurodap1 and ERP72 genes were up-regulated compared to the control even in the group exposed to low manganese dose (0.2 mg/kg B.W./day). CONCLUSIONS: Twenty-eight genes detected for the first time in this study were closely related to the manganese-induced neurotoxic-metabolism in the rat basal ganglia and further study of these genes can give some more useful information about the manganese metabolism.
Animals ; Basal Ganglia* ; Blotting, Northern ; Brain ; DNA, Complementary* ; Drug Resistance, Multiple ; Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress ; Gene Expression* ; Humans ; Male ; Manganese ; Membranes ; Metabolism ; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis* ; Rats* ; Rats, Sprague-Dawley ; RNA ; Toxicology ; Transcriptome

OBJECTIVES: This study investigated the toxic effects of cadmium on placental function and reproduction in rats. For this study, the mRNA levels of the placental prolactin-growth hormone (PRL-GH) gene family, placental trophoblast cell frequemcy and reproductive data were analyzed. METHODS: Pregnant F344 Fisher rats (200 g+/-23 g) were intraperitoneally injected with 0, 0.5, and 5.0 mg/kg B.W/day of cadmium (CdCl2) dissolved in saline from days 7-11 or 16-20 of pregnancy, and were sacrificed at days 11 or 20, respectively. The mRNA levels were analyzed by Northern blot hybridization and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. The hormone concentration was analyzed by radioimmunoassay and the frequemcy of the placental trophoblast cells was observed by histochemical study. Reproductive data were surveyed at day 20 of the pregnancy and after the births. Statistical analysis was carried out using the SAS program (version 8.1). RESULTS: The mRNA levels of the PRL-GH gene family were reduced dose dependently by cadmium. The mRNA levels of Pit-1a and -b isotype genes were also reduced by cadmium. The hormone concentration of PL-Iv and -II was decreased by cadmium. During the second half of pregnancy (days 11-21), a high dose of cadmium exposure significantly reduced the frequency of spongiotrophoblast and trophoblast giant cells that secrete the PRL-GH hormones. In the last stage of pregnancy (day 20), a high dose of cadmium exposure induced the apoptosis of spon-giotrophoblast cells in the junctional zone of the placenta. Reproductive data such as placental and infant weight, number of live fetuses were decreased, and number of resorptions and dead fetuses, post-implantation loss were increased significantly in the cadmium exposed group compared with the control. CONCLUSIONS: Cadmium disrupts the functions of the placenta and these effects leads to reproductive disorders in rats.
Animals ; Apoptosis ; Blotting, Northern ; Cadmium* ; Fetus ; Giant Cells ; Humans ; Infant ; Parturition ; Placenta ; Pregnancy ; Radioimmunoassay ; Rats* ; Reproduction* ; RNA, Messenger ; Trophoblasts