PURPOSE: Despite the high drinking rates and the complexity of drinking behaviors in adolescents, insufficient attention has been paid to their drinking patterns. Therefore, we aimed to identify patterns of adolescent drinking behaviors and factors predicting the distinct subgroups of adolescent drinking behaviors.METHODS: We analyzed nationally representative secondary data obtained in 2017. Our final sample included 24,417 Korean adolescents who had consumed at least one glass of alcohol in their lifetime. To investigate patterns of drinking behaviors, we conducted a latent class analysis using nine alcohol-related characteristics, including alcohol consumption levels, solitary drinking, timing of drinking initiation, and negative consequences of drinking. Furthermore, we investigated differences in demographics, mental health status, and characteristics of substance use across the latent classes identified in our study. To do so, we used the PROC LCA with COVARIATES statement in the SAS software.RESULTS: We identified three latent classes of drinking behaviors: current non-drinkers (CND), binge drinkers (BD), and problem drinkers (PD). Compared to the CND class, both BD and PD classes were strongly associated with higher academic year, lower academic performance, higher levels of stress, suicidal ideation, lifetime conventional or electronic cigarette use, and lifetime use of other drugs.CONCLUSION: Health professionals should develop and implement intervention strategies targeting individual subgroups of drinking behaviors to obtain better outcomes. In particular, health professionals should consider different characteristics across subgroups of adolescent drinking behaviors when developing the interventions, such as poor mental health status and other substance use among binge and problem drinkers.
Adolescent ; Alcohol Drinking ; Demography ; Drinking Behavior ; Drinking ; Electronic Cigarettes ; Glass ; Health Occupations ; Humans ; Mental Health ; Republic of Korea ; Suicidal Ideation ; Underage Drinking

Purpose: Despite the high drinking rates and the complexity of drinking behaviors in adolescents, insufficient attention has been paid to their drinking patterns. Therefore, we aimed to identify patterns of adolescent drinking behaviors and factors predicting the distinct subgroups of adolescent drinking behaviors. Methods: We analyzed nationally representative secondary data obtained in 2017. Our final sample included 24,417 Korean adolescents who had consumed at least one glass of alcohol in their lifetime. To investigate patterns of drinking behaviors, we conducted a latent class analysis using nine alcohol-related characteristics, including alcohol consumption levels, solitary drinking, timing of drinking initiation, and negative consequences of drinking. Furthermore, we investigated differences in demographics, mental health status, and characteristics of substance use across the latent classes identified in our study. To do so, we used the PROC LCA with COVARIATES statement in the SAS software. Results: We identified three latent classes of drinking behaviors: current non-drinkers (CND), binge drinkers (BD), and problem drinkers (PD). Compared to the CND class, both BD and PD classes were strongly associated with higher academic year, lower academic performance, higher levels of stress, suicidal ideation, lifetime conventional or electronic cigarette use, and lifetime use of other drugs. Conclusion Health professionals should develop and implement intervention strategies targeting individual subgroups of drinking behaviors to obtain better outcomes. In particular, health professionals should consider different characteristics across subgroups of adolescent drinking behaviors when developing the interventions, such as poor mental health status and other substance use among binge and problem drinkers.

Purpose: This study aimed to compare the clinical features of panic disorder (PD) with comorbid agoraphobia to those of PD alone. We focused on autonomic nervous system (ANS) alterations reflected in heart rate variability (HRV) and executive function deficits reflected in the Stroop test. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively compared psychometric features, Stroop test results, and resting-state HRV across three groups: a subclinical group with anxiety attack history, a PD group without agoraphobia, and a PD group with agoraphobia. The subclinical group included 10 male and 34 female, the PD without agoraphobia group included 17 male and 19 female, and the PD with agoraphobia group included 11 male and 18 female. Results: The PD with agoraphobia group had higher Symptom Checklist–95 scores than the other groups. Both PD groups had longer reaction times in the Stroop test than the subclinical group. There were no significant differences in HRV parameters between the PD groups with and without agoraphobia. Compared with the subclinical group, the PD with agoraphobia group showed significantly lower values of the natural logarithm of low-frequency HRV. Conclusion Our results do not support that executive function deficits and ANS alterations are more pronounced with comorbid agoraphobia among PD groups. However, PD with agoraphobia patients showed more complex and severe clinical symptoms in their self-reports. Compared with the subclinical group, PD patients with agoraphobia showed specific features in the natural logarithm of low-frequency HRV. Our findings suggest that agoraphobia comorbidity should be considered when evaluating or treating patients with PD.

BACKGROUND: Traditional medicines have been leveraged for the treatment and prevention of obesity, one of the fastest growing diseases in the world. However, the exact mechanisms underlying the effects of traditional medicine on obesity are not yet fully understood. METHODS: We produced the transcriptomes of epididymal white adipose tissue (eWAT), liver, muscle, and hypothalamus harvested from mice fed a normal diet, high-fat-diet alone, high-fat-diet together with green tea, or a high-fat-diet together with Taeumjowitang, a traditional Korean medicine. RESULTS: We found tissue-specific gene expression patterns as follows: (i) the eWAT transcriptome was more significantly altered by Taeumjowitang than by green tea, (ii) the liver transcriptome was similarly altered by Taeumjowitang and green tea, and (iii) both the muscle and hypothalamus transcriptomes were more significantly altered by green tea than Taeumjowitang. We then applied integrated network analyses, which revealed that functional networks associated with lymphocyte activation were more effectively regulated by Taeumjowitang than by green tea in the eWAT. In contrast, green tea was a more effective regulator of functional networks associated with glucose metabolic processes in the eWAT. CONCLUSIONS: Taeumjowitang and green tea have a differential tissue-specific and pathway-specific therapeutic effect on obesity.
Adipose Tissue, White ; Animals ; Diet ; Gene Expression ; Gene Regulatory Networks ; Glucose ; Hypothalamus ; Liver ; Lymphocyte Activation ; Medicine, Traditional ; Metabolism ; Mice* ; Obesity ; Sequence Analysis, RNA ; Tea* ; Transcriptome

Objectives: This study aimed to demonstrate the bone mineral density (BMD) and body composition in postmenopausal women with knee osteoarthritis (OA) who underwent surgical treatment, such as total knee arthroplasty, osteotomy, or meniscectomy. Methods: A total of 254 women with OA aged 50 years who underwent surgical treatment were enrolled in this study. We evaluated obesity-related factors, muscle components, and BMD using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Results: No significant differences were noted in the BMD of the hip joint between the symptomatic side of the leg with knee OA and the contralateral side. However, when comparing the BMD of each component, the results indicated a significantly higher BMD in the obesity group based on body mass index (BMI). When defining sarcopenic obesity (SO) using various indicators of obesity (BMI, the estimated visceral adipose tissue area, android/gynoid ratio, and total body fat percentage), the prevalence of SO in the OA group who underwent surgical treatment ranged from 22.0% to 49.6%. Conclusions This study investigated obesity-related factors in patients with advanced knee OA who underwent surgery, revealing a high prevalence of overweight/obese individuals, the presence of SO, and a complex relationship between obesity, body composition, and bone density, highlighting the potential protective effects of weight-bearing on bone health while exploring the impact of sarcopenia on bone density differences in the context of OA. Depending on various definitions of obesity, diverse proportions of SO in patients with OA have been observed, and further detailed research is required to understand its impact on the condition.

Multisystem inflammatory disease in children is a Kawasaki disease like illness occurring after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection in children. As the pandemic progresses, similar syndromes were also reported in adult with a decreased incidence.Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in adults (MIS-A) can be characterized with shock, heart failure, and gastrointestinal symptoms with elevated inflammatory markers after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection. Herein, we describe the first case of MIS-A in South Korea. A 38-year-old man presented to our hospital with a 5-day history of abdominal pain and fever. He had been treated with antibiotics for 5 days at the previous hospital, but symptoms had worsened and he had developed orthopnea on the day of presentation.He suffered COVID-19 six weeks ago. Laboratory data revealed elevated white blood cell counts with neutrophil dominance, C-reactive protein, and B-type natriuretic peptide. Chest X-ray showed normal lung parenchyme and echocardiography showed severe biventricular failure with normal chamber size. We diagnosed him as MIS-A and treated with intravenous immunoglobulin and steroid.

Multisystem inflammatory disease in children is a Kawasaki disease like illness occurring after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection in children. As the pandemic progresses, similar syndromes were also reported in adult with a decreased incidence.Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in adults (MIS-A) can be characterized with shock, heart failure, and gastrointestinal symptoms with elevated inflammatory markers after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection. Herein, we describe the first case of MIS-A in South Korea. A 38-year-old man presented to our hospital with a 5-day history of abdominal pain and fever. He had been treated with antibiotics for 5 days at the previous hospital, but symptoms had worsened and he had developed orthopnea on the day of presentation.He suffered COVID-19 six weeks ago. Laboratory data revealed elevated white blood cell counts with neutrophil dominance, C-reactive protein, and B-type natriuretic peptide. Chest X-ray showed normal lung parenchyme and echocardiography showed severe biventricular failure with normal chamber size. We diagnosed him as MIS-A and treated with intravenous immunoglobulin and steroid.

BACKGROUND: Smad3 linker phosphorylation plays essential roles in tumor progression and metastasis. We have previously reported that the mutation of Smad3 linker phosphorylation sites (Smad3-Erk/Pro-directed kinase site mutant constructs [EPSM]) markedly reduced the tumor progression while increasing the lung metastasis in breast cancer. METHODS: We performed high-throughput RNA-Sequencing of the human prostate cancer cell lines infected with adenoviral Smad3-EPSM to identify the genes regulated by Smad3-EPSM. RESULTS: In this study, we identified genes which are differentially regulated in the presence of Smad3-EPSM. We first confirmed that Smad3-EPSM strongly enhanced a capability of cell motility and invasiveness as well as the expression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition marker genes, CDH2, SNAI1, and ZEB1 in response to TGF-β1 in human pancreatic and prostate cancer cell lines. We identified GADD45B, CTGF, and JUNB genes in the expression profiles associated with cell motility and invasiveness induced by the Smad3-EPSM. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggested that inhibition of Smad3 linker phosphorylation may enhance cell motility and invasiveness by inducing expression of GADD45B, CTGF, and JUNB genes in various cancers.
Breast Neoplasms ; Cell Line ; Cell Movement ; Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition ; Humans ; Lung ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; Pancreatic Neoplasms ; Phosphorylation ; Phosphotransferases ; Prostatic Neoplasms ; Sequence Analysis, RNA

The original version of this article contained error in the URL of the SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS.

Iron supplements such as ferrous sulfate tablets are usually used to treat iron-deficiency anemia in some elderly patients with primary neurologic disorders or decreased gag reflexes due to stroke, senile dementia, or parkinsonism. While the aspiration of ferrous sulfate is rarely reported, it is a potentially life-threatening condition that can lead to airway necrosis and bronchial stenosis. A detailed history and high suspicion of aspiration are required to avoid delays in diagnosis and treatment. The diagnosis can be confirmed by bronchoscopic examination and a tissue biopsy. Early removal of the aspirated tablet prevents acute complications, such as bronchial necrosis, hemoptysis, and lobar consolidation. Tablet removal is also necessary to prevent late bronchial stenosis. We presented the first case in Korea of a ferrous sulfate tablet aspiration that induced severe endobronchial inflammation.
Aged ; Alzheimer Disease ; Anemia, Iron-Deficiency ; Biopsy ; Bronchi ; Bronchoscopy ; Constriction, Pathologic ; Diagnosis ; Foreign Bodies ; Hemoptysis ; Humans ; Inflammation* ; Iron ; Korea ; Necrosis ; Nervous System Diseases ; Parkinsonian Disorders ; Reflex ; Respiratory Aspiration ; Stroke ; Tablets