No abstract available.
Humans ; Schools, Medical*

We looked for and discussed the changes of curricula of medical course of 31 medical schools during the period of 1984 and 1993. The data used in this study were Educational State Report of Korean Med ical Schools published from Dean Association of Korean Medical Schools in 1984 and 1992-1993. The significant findings were as follows. 1. There were great variability in number of subjects and in time for lecture and exercise in each subject among 31 medical schools. 2. There were a great deal of changes during the period of 1984 and 1993. There were increased tendency in number of subjects and especially block lectures. Schools which had 1-4 subjects vanished in curriculum were most frequent among 22 schools during 9 years. Name of most frequent subjects in block lecture were clinico-patholo gical conference, reproductive medicine, hematology, oncology and cardiology in 1993. 3. Subjects which were transferred to pre-medical program were classified to two groups. One group was traditional basic medical subjects such anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, the other group was newly introduced subjects such as molecular biology and cell biology as basic medical subjects. 4. The data were suggested that long time was needed to stabilized in newly introduced subjects of clinical medicine such as neurology and plastic surgery. Time for lecture and exercise of these subjects shows increasing tendency in schools established before 1978, but decreasing tendency in schools established after 1978.
Biochemistry ; Cardiology ; Clinical Medicine ; Curriculum* ; Hematology ; Humans ; Lectures ; Molecular Biology ; Neurology ; Physiology ; Reproductive Medicine ; Schools, Medical ; Surgery, Plastic

OBJECTIVE: To design a screening method which identifies women with a potential of progression to the premature ovarian failure (POF) in near future, particularly among young women who have high FSH level but no symptoms and signs of POF. METHODS: Peripheral venous blood samples were collected from 30 patients with POF (age range, 19- 39 years) and from 30 controls with normal serum FSH level who had delivered two or more naturally conceived babies (age range, 32-39 years). mtDNA/28S rRNA ratio was determined by real-time quantitative PCR. Comparative threshold cycle (CT) method was adopted for the relative quantitation between two groups and the effectiveness of the method was evaluated. RESULTS: A significant decrease in mtDNA/28S rRNA ratio was found in the POF group (0.58 0.38) when compared with the control group (1.15 0.67) (P<0.01). In both control and POF groups, there was positive correlation between mtDNA and mtDNA/28S rRNA ratio (r=0.774, P<0.001; r=0.556, P=0.001, respectively) and negative correlation between 28S rRNA and mtDNA/28S rRNA ratio (r=-0.677, P<0.001; r=-0.627, P=0.001, respectively), which indicated the suitability of the method. CONCLUSION: This study showed a significant decrease in mtDNA copy number in the peripheral venous blood of POF patients. The comparative CT method was found to be an effective and efficient alternative for the screening purposes. With this basis, further studies on the early diagnostic and/or screening method for the POF might be enriched.
DNA, Mitochondrial* ; Female ; Humans ; Mass Screening ; Polymerase Chain Reaction ; Primary Ovarian Insufficiency* ; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction*