OBJECTIVES: Considering large diversity of clinical presentation of schizophrenia, it is important to identify valid clinical subtypes or dimensions that might have homogeneous biological underpinning. The current study aimed to explore lifetime symptom-based dimensional phenotypes in patients with chronic schizophrenia, and to investigate their correlation with cognitive functions and other clinical characteristics. METHODS: Lifetime-based symptoms and additional clinical variables were measured using the Diagnostic Interview for Genetic Studies and the Schedule for the Deficit Syndrome in 315 clinically stable patients with chronic schizophrenia. Through principal components factor analysis, eight dimensional phenotypes were obtained. Comprehensive neuropsychological tests were administered for 103 out of 315 patients, and domain scores were calculated for cognitive domains defined in the MATRICS consensus battery. RESULTS: 'Non-paranoid delusion factor' including delusions of grandiose or religious nature, showed significant negative correlation with processing speed, working memory, attention/vigilance, and general cognitive ability, and positive correlation with intra-individual variability. 'Negative symptom factor' showed significant negative correlation only with general cognitive ability. Those two factors were also negatively correlated with function levels measured by Global Assessment Scale (GAS), and associated with poor treatment responses. CONCLUSION: Symptom-based dimensional phenotypes of schizophrenia measured on a lifetime basis showed discriminative correlation with cognitive function domains, global functioning level, and overall treatment responses, indicating their possibility as valid phenotype axes of schizophrenia having homogeneous biologic basis.
Appointments and Schedules ; Cognition ; Consensus ; Delusions ; Humans ; Memory, Short-Term ; Neuropsychological Tests ; Phenotype ; Schizophrenia*

OBJECTIVES: Intra-individual variability of cognitive performance across different tests or domains has been reported as an important index of cognitive function. The aim of the current study is to examine the intra-individual variability across different cognitive domains and tests in patients with schizophrenia, their unaffected siblings, and normal controls. We also compared the variability among three patient sub-groups divided according to the duration of illness. METHODS: Comprehensive neurocognitive tests were administered in order to stabilize patients with schizophrenia (n=129), healthy siblings (n=38) of the patients, and normal controls (n=110). Intra-individual variability was computed from the variance of the scores of six cognitive domains of the Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia consensus battery. We examined intra-individual variability across six factor-based cognitive scores and individual test scores of each cognitive domain. RESULTS: Compared to the normal control and sibling groups, patients showed significantly increased intra-individual variability across six cognitive domains and individual cognitive tests of each domain. Compared to the normal control, siblings showed significantly increased intra-individual variability only across individual tests of the processing of speed domain. Among patient sub-groups, those with the longest duration of illness (> or =11 years) showed significantly higher intra- individual variability across six cognitive domains and across individual tests of the processing of speed domain compared to the other two groups. CONCLUSION: This study identified cognitive dissonances across six cognitive domain schizophrenia patients. These cognitive characteristics were not observed in the sibling groups and seemed to progress during the course of illness.
Cognition ; Cognitive Dissonance ; Consensus ; Humans ; Neuropsychological Tests* ; Schizophrenia* ; Siblings*

Pyoderma gangrenosum (PG) is a rare, non-infectious, neutrophilic dermatosis characterized by painful ulcers with indistinct borders and peripheral erythema. The diagnosis of PG requires the exclusion of other causes of similar appearing skin manifestations, including vasculitis and infections. The pathogenesis of PG is not clear; however, dysregulation of the immune system has been suggested in previous studies. More than half of the PG patients have underlying diseases; the most common being inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The progression of PG in IBD patients is seen after the onset of IBD, usually during its exacerbation. On the other hand, PG may follow a course independent of the intestinal disease. We present a case of an 18-year-old young male with PG that presented before being diagnosed with ulcerative colitis as an associated condition. He had a painful ulcerative lesion on his right shin with no previous gastrointestinal symptoms. This case suggests that investigating for underlying disorders is essential in PG patients despite the lack of symptoms other than the skin lesions.

The ultimate goal of the quality control program for special periodic health examination agencies is to diagnose the health condition of a worker correctly, based on accurate examination and analysis skills, leading to protect the worker’s health. The quality control program on three areas, chemical analysis for biological monitoring since 1995, and pneumoconiosis, audiometric testing since 1996, has contributed to improve the reliability of occupational health screenings by improving the issues including standardization of testing methods, tools, diagnostic opinions, and reliability of analysis for biological monitoring. It has contributed to improving the reliability of occupational health monitoring by rectifying the following issues associated with previous monitoring: absence of standardized testing methods, testing tools that are not upgraded, mismatching diagnostic opinions, and unreliable results of biological specimen analysis. Nevertheless, there are issues in need of further improvement such as lack of expertise or the use of inappropriate method for health examination, and passive and unwilling participation in the quality control. We suggested solutions to these problems for each area of quality control program. Above all, it is essential to provide active support for health examiners to develop their expertise, while encouraging all the health screening agencies, employers, and workers to develop the desire to improve the system and to maintain the relevance.
Environmental Monitoring ; Mass Screening ; Methods ; Occupational Health ; Pneumoconiosis ; Quality Control ; Republic of Korea

This paper describes a community effort to improve earlier versions of the full-text corpus of Genomics & Informatics by semi-automatically detecting and correcting PDF-to-text conversion errors and optical character recognition errors during the first hackathon of Genomics & Informatics Annotation Hackathon (GIAH) event. Extracting text from multi-column biomedical documents such as Genomics & Informatics is known to be notoriously difficult. The hackathon was piloted as part of a coding competition of the ELTEC College of Engineering at Ewha Womans University in order to enable researchers and students to create or annotate their own versions of the Genomics & Informatics corpus, to gain and create knowledge about corpus linguistics, and simultaneously to acquire tangible and transferable skills. The proposed projects during the hackathon harness an internal database containing different versions of the corpus and annotations.

This paper describes a community effort to improve earlier versions of the full-text corpus of Genomics & Informatics by semi-automatically detecting and correcting PDF-to-text conversion errors and optical character recognition errors during the first hackathon of Genomics & Informatics Annotation Hackathon (GIAH) event. Extracting text from multi-column biomedical documents such as Genomics & Informatics is known to be notoriously difficult. The hackathon was piloted as part of a coding competition of the ELTEC College of Engineering at Ewha Womans University in order to enable researchers and students to create or annotate their own versions of the Genomics & Informatics corpus, to gain and create knowledge about corpus linguistics, and simultaneously to acquire tangible and transferable skills. The proposed projects during the hackathon harness an internal database containing different versions of the corpus and annotations.