Neuroinflammation is an important process underlying a wide variety of neurodegenerative diseases. Carvacrol (CAR) is a phenolic monoterpene commonly used as a food additive due to its antibacterial properties, but it has also been shown to exhibit strong antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, and neuroprotective effects. Here, we sought to investigate the effects of CAR on inflammation in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, as well as the molecular mechanisms underlying these effects. In our study, lipopolysaccharide was injected into the lateral ventricle of rats to induce memory impairment and neuroinflammation. Daily administration of CAR (25, 50, and 100 mg/kg) for 21 days improved recognition, discrimination, and memory impairments relative to untreated controls. CAR administration significantly attenuated expression of several inflammatory factors in the brain, including interleukin-1β, tumor necrosis factor-α, and cyclooxygenase-2. In addition, CAR significantly increased expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) mRNA, and decreased expression of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) mRNA. Taken together, these results show that CAR can improve memory impairment caused by neuroinflammation. This cognitive enhancement is due to the anti-inflammatory effects of CAR medicated by its regulation of BDNF and TLR4. Thus, CAR has significant potential as an inhibitor of memory degeneration in neurodegenerative diseases.
Animals ; Brain ; Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor ; Cyclooxygenase 2 ; Cytokines ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Food Additives ; Hippocampus ; Inflammation ; Lateral Ventricles ; Lipopolysaccharides ; Memory ; Necrosis ; Neurodegenerative Diseases ; Neuroprotective Agents ; Phenol ; Prefrontal Cortex ; Rats ; RNA, Messenger ; Toll-Like Receptor 4

0.05). The area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) was 0.922 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.89–0.95]. In external validation, the discrimination was good, with an AUC value of 0.833 (95% CI 0.70–0.92) for this model. Nomogram calibration plots indicated good agreement between the predicted and observed outcomes, exhibiting close approximation between the predicted and observed probability.CONCLUSION: We constructed a scoring model for predicting massive transfusion during cesarean section in women with placenta previa. This model may help in determining the need to prepare an appropriate amount of blood products and the optimal timing of blood transfusion.]]>
Area Under Curve ; Blood Transfusion ; Calibration ; Cesarean Section ; Cohort Studies ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Early Intervention (Education) ; Erythrocytes ; Female ; Humans ; Logistic Models ; Maternal Age ; Nomograms ; Placenta Previa ; Placenta ; Placentation ; Postpartum Hemorrhage ; Pregnancy ; ROC Curve ; Ultrasonography

PURPOSE: This study aimed to validate the psychometric properties of the CRAFFT (Car, Relax, Alone, Forget, Family/Friends, Trouble) by using item response theory (IRT) and further examine gender differences in item-level responses.METHODS: This study used the 13(th) (2017) Korea Youth Risk Behavior Survey data conducted by the Korean Centers for Disease and Prevention and analyzed data of 8,568 students who reported drinking alcohol in the previous 30 days. IRT assumptions including unidimensionality, local independence, and monotonicity were tested. A one-factor two-parameter IRT model was fitted for item parameterization (M₂ = 76.92, 20 df, p < .001, root mean square error of approximation = 0.02). Graphics for item characteristic curves and item and test information curves were provided. Differential item functioning (DIF) analysis was evaluated to measure item equivalence between boys and girls.RESULTS: Unidimensionality and local independence were satisfied, and the dominant factor eigenvalue and variance were 2.48 and 41.3% in boys and 2.08 and 34.7% in girls, respectively, and residual correlations in paired items were less than .2. The discrimination parameters were estimated as 1.32–3.59 for boys and 1.30–3.64 for girls. The severity parameters estimated verity as −0.23 to 1.67 for boys and −0.32 to 2.17 for girls. DIF was detected for four of six items, “Car,” “Relax,” “Forget,” and “Family/friends.” However, its impact on the total score was negligible.CONCLUSION: The CRAFFT is a valid and reliable screening tool to identify alcohol use problems for both boys and girls, exhibiting good discrimination, good coverage of severity, and negligible DIF.
Adolescent ; Alcohols ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Drinking ; Female ; Humans ; Korea ; Mass Screening ; Psychometrics ; Risk-Taking

OBJECTIVE: Despite increased survival in patients with cardiac arrest, it remains difficult to determine patient prognosis at the early stage. This study evaluated the prognosis of cardiac arrest patients using brain injury, inflammation, cardiovascular ischemic events, and coagulation/fibrinolysis markers collected 24, 48, and 72 hours after return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC).METHODS: From January 2011 to December 2016, we retrospectively observed patients who underwent therapeutic hypothermia. Blood samples were collected immediately and 24, 48, and 72 hours after ROSC. Neuron-specific enolase (NSE), S100-B protein, procalcitonin, troponin I, creatine kinase-MB, pro-brain natriuretic protein, D-dimer, fibrin degradation product, antithrombin-III, fibrinogen, and lactate levels were measured. Prognosis was evaluated using Glasgow-Pittsburgh cerebral performance categories and the predictive accuracy of each marker was evaluated. The secondary outcome was whether the presence of multiple markers improved prediction accuracy.RESULTS: A total of 102 patients were included in the study: 39 with good neurologic outcomes and 63 with poor neurologic outcomes. The mean NSE level of good outcomes measured 72 hours after ROSC was 18.50 ng/mL. The area under the curve calculated on receiver operating characteristic analysis was 0.92, which showed the best predictive power among all markers included in the study analysis. The relative integrated discrimination improvement and category-free net reclassification improvement models showed no improvement in prognostic value when combined with all other markers and NSE (72 hours).CONCLUSION: Although biomarker combinations did not improve prognostic accuracy, NSE (72 hours) showed the best predictive power for neurological prognosis in patients who received therapeutic hypothermia.
Biomarkers ; Brain Injuries ; Creatine ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Fibrin ; Fibrinogen ; Heart Arrest ; Humans ; Hypothermia, Induced ; Inflammation ; Lactic Acid ; Phosphopyruvate Hydratase ; Prognosis ; Retrospective Studies ; ROC Curve ; Troponin I

BACKGROUND: Recent evidences indicate that early rapid renal function decline is closely associated with the development and progression of diabetic kidney disease. We have investigated the association between carotid atherosclerosis and rapid renal function decline in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and preserved renal function.METHODS: In a prospective, multicenter cohort, a total of 967 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and preserved renal function were followed for 6 years with serial estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) measurements. Common carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) and presence of carotid plaque were assessed at baseline. Rapid renal function decline was defined as an eGFR decline >3.3% per year.RESULTS: Over a median follow-up of 6 years, 158 participants (16.3%) developed rapid renal function decline. While there was no difference in CIMT, the presence of carotid plaque in rapid decliners was significantly higher than in non-decliners (23.2% vs. 12.2%, P<0.001). In multivariable logistic regression analysis, presence of carotid plaque was an independent predictor of rapid renal function decline (odds ratio, 2.33; 95% confidence interval, 1.48 to 3.68; P<0.0001) after adjustment for established risk factors. The model including the carotid plaque had better performance for discrimination of rapid renal function decline than the model without carotid plaque (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve 0.772 vs. 0.744, P=0.016).CONCLUSION: Close monitoring of renal function and early intensive management may be beneficial in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and carotid plaques.
Carotid Artery Diseases ; Carotid Intima-Media Thickness ; Carotid Stenosis ; Cohort Studies ; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 ; Diabetic Nephropathies ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Follow-Up Studies ; Glomerular Filtration Rate ; Humans ; Logistic Models ; Prospective Studies ; Risk Factors ; ROC Curve

The infection with Candida spp. for oral cavity is being increasingly reported. However, its variations have not yet been specifically described in periodontitis. The present study was conducted to use an uniplex 26S rRNA-based amplicons to detect and discriminate Candida using only one pair of ribosomal primers. A total of 50 patients with chronic periodontitis was involved in the study. Pure Candida colonies were isolated from 23 patients and genomic DNA was extracted, and PCR was conducted. Direct DNA sequencing followed by comprehensive phylogenetic analyses were performed to confirm the identity of Candida colonies. Results indicated that the ration of Candida-infected patients was 46%, with a high prevalence of C. albicans, followed by remarkably lower ratios of C. parapsilosis, C. glabrata, C. kefyr, and C. dubliniensis respectively. Phylogenetic analyses indicated obvious discrimination amongst the analyzed Candida species as each observed species occupied a distinctive phylogenetic position. The current results reported a simple, efficient, and low-cost detection of five species of Candida without the need for other costly techniques of molecular screening. The current findings may help dentists to easily take a snapshot of the patterns of Candida infection in periodontitis cases to assess the nature and grade of infection.
Candida ; Chronic Periodontitis ; Dentists ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; DNA ; Genes, rRNA ; Humans ; Mass Screening ; Mouth ; Periodontitis ; Polymerase Chain Reaction ; Prevalence ; RNA, Ribosomal ; Sequence Analysis, DNA

PURPOSE: This study aimed to explore public opinion on workplace bullying in the nursing field, by analyzing the keywords and topics of online news comments.METHODS: This was a text-mining study that collected, processed, and analyzed text data. A total of 89,951 comments on 650 online news articles, reported between January 1, 2013 and July 31, 2018, were collected via web crawling. The collected unstructured text data were preprocessed and keyword analysis and topic modeling were performed using R programming.RESULTS: The 10 most important keywords were “work” (37121.7), “hospital” (25286.0), “patients” (24600.8), “woman” (24015.6), “physician” (20840.6), “trouble” (18539.4), “time” (17896.3), “money” (16379.9), “new nurses” (14056.8), and “salary” (13084.1). The 22,572 preprocessed key words were categorized into four topics: “poor working environment”, “culture among women”, “unfair oppression”, and “society-level solutions”.CONCLUSION: Public interest in workplace bullying among nurses has continued to increase. The public agreed that negative work environment and nursing shortage could cause workplace bullying. They also considered nurse bullying as a problem that should be resolved at a societal level. It is necessary to conduct further research through gender discrimination perspectives on nurse workplace bullying and the social value of nursing work.
Bullying ; Data Mining ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Nursing ; Public Opinion ; Sexism

Estimating the risk of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori)-induced gastric cancer during endoscopic examination is important. Owing to recent advances in gastrointestinal endoscopy, the gross appearance of the background gastric mucosa has enabled discrimination of subjects with active, chronic, and past H. pylori infection from those with no history of infection. To provide subjective criteria for H. pylori infection-related endoscopic findings with increased risk of gastric cancer, the Kyoto classification of gastritis was proposed at the 85th annual meeting of the Japanese Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy in May 2013 in Kyoto. The main contents focus on determining the gastric cancer risk by scoring the endoscopic findings of the background gastric mucosa from 0 to 8. These important findings are not described in the Kyoto Global Consensus Conference proceedings published in English. To better estimate the gastric cancer risk during screening endoscopy in an H. pylori-prevalent population, knowledge of the Japanese version of the Kyoto classification is important. This new classification emphasizes the discrimination of subjects with H. pylori infection by assessing 19 endoscopic findings (presence of atrophy, intestinal metaplasia, diffuse redness, spotty redness, mucosal swelling, enlarged folds, sticky mucus, chicken skin-like nodularity, foveolar-hyperplastic polyp, xanthoma, depressed erosion, regular arrangement of collecting venules, fundic gland polyp, linear red streak, raised erosion, hematin deposit, multiple white and flat-elevated lesions, patchy redness, and map-like redness). In this review, the validity of the Kyoto classification is summarized in conjunction with several suggestions to resolve emerging H. pylori infection-related problems in Korea.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Atrophy ; Chickens ; Classification ; Consensus ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Endoscopy ; Endoscopy, Gastrointestinal ; Gastric Mucosa ; Gastritis ; Helicobacter pylori ; Helicobacter ; Hemin ; Humans ; Korea ; Mass Screening ; Metaplasia ; Mucus ; Polyps ; Stomach Neoplasms ; Venules ; Xanthomatosis

PURPOSE: To validate and update a nomogram for predicting ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) upstaging in preoperative biopsy. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Medical records of 444 preoperative DCIS patients were evaluated and used to validate a previous version of the Severance nomogram for predicting DCIS upstaging in preoperative biopsy. Patients were divided into two groups according to the final postoperative pathology. Univariate and multivariate analyses with the chi-square test, Student's t-test, and binary logistic regression method identified new significant variables. The updated nomogram was evaluated with the C-index and Hosmer—Lemeshow goodness of fit test. RESULTS: The area under a receiver operating characteristic curve for comparison with the previous nomogram was 0.48. In postoperative pathology, the pure DCIS and invasive cancer groups comprised 345 and 99 cases, respectively. Approximately 22.3% of patients preoperatively diagnosed with DCIS were upstaged to invasive cancer. Significant variables in the univariate analysis were operation type, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 overexpression, comedo necrosis, sonographic mass, mammographic mass, preoperative biopsy method, and suspicious microinvasion in preoperative biopsy. In multivariate analysis, operation type, sonographic mass, mammographic mass, and suspicious microinvasion were risk factors for upstaging. The updated model with these variables showed moderate discrimination and was appropriate in the calibration test. CONCLUSION: The previous nomogram did not effectively discriminate upstaging of preoperative DCIS in an independent cohort. An updated version of the nomogram appears to provide more accurate information for predicting preoperative DCIS upstaging.
Biopsy ; Breast Neoplasms ; Breast ; Calibration ; Carcinoma, Ductal ; Carcinoma, Intraductal, Noninfiltrating ; Cohort Studies ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Humans ; Logistic Models ; Medical Records ; Methods ; Multivariate Analysis ; Necrosis ; Nomograms ; Pathology ; Receptor, Epidermal Growth Factor ; Risk Factors ; ROC Curve ; Ultrasonography

PURPOSE: Identification of lymph node (LN) metastasis in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is critical for disease staging and selection of therapeutic modalities. Sometimes it is not possible to obtain LN core tissue by endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspirate (EBUS-TBNA), resulting in low diagnostic yield. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study, 138 specimens were collected from 108 patients who underwent EBUS-TBNA under the suspicion of LN metastasis of NSCLC. Diagnostic yields of anti-CD45 and anti-methionyl-tRNA synthetase (MRS), immunofluorescent (IF) staining on cytology specimens were compared with those of conventional cytology and positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT). RESULTS: MRS was strongly expressed in NSCLC cells metastasized to LNs, but weakly expressed in cells at the periphery of the LN germinal center. The majority of cells were CD20 positive, although a few cells were either CD3 or CD14 positive, indicating that CD45 staining is required for discrimination of non-malignant LN constituent cells from NSCLC cells. When the diagnostic efficacy of MRS/CD45 IF staining was evaluated using 138 LN cellular aspirates from 108 patients through EBUS-TBNA, the sensitivity was 76.7% and specificity was 90.8%, whereas those of conventional cytology test were 71.8% and 100.0%, respectively. Combining the results of conventional cytology testing and those of PET-CT showed a sensitivity and specificity of 71.6% and 100%, and the addition of MRS/CD45 dual IF data to this combination increased sensitivity and specificity to 85.1% and 97.8%, respectively. CONCLUSION: MRS/CD45 dual IF staining showed good diagnostic performance and may be a good tool complementing conventional cytology test for determining LN metastasis of NSCLC.
Amino Acyl-tRNA Synthetases ; Carcinoma, Non-Small-Cell Lung ; Complement System Proteins ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Electrons ; Germinal Center ; Humans ; Ligases ; Lymph Nodes ; Methionine-tRNA Ligase ; Needles ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; Sensitivity and Specificity