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An epidemiologic investigation was conducted to identify the source of infection and the mode of transmission of typhoid fever outbreak occurred in Ohchun middle and high schools located in Young il Gun, Kyungpook Province from May 21 to Jun 4, 1994. Four out of 13 hospitalized students in three general hospitals in Pohang City were culture positive typhoid fever (Salmonella typhi Group D). Review of the in and outpatient logbooks of the three general hospitals in Pohang City, county health center and local clinics in the vicinity of the Ohchun middle and high schools suggested that the outbreak was confined to the schools. Drinking water source of the schools was two underground water pumps that had no treatment facilities; one in northern end and the other in southern end of the main school building. However, the southern water pump was closed on April 28, 1994 because a recent test for the water revealed E-coli suggesting a possible fecal contamination. Two hundred twenty students stated that they had experienced symptoms related to typhoid fever since April l, 1994 in a self administered questionaire survey of all of the 2, 226 students. Personal interviews with these 220 students were performed to confirm the clinical history together with a rectal swab culture for typhoid fever and Widal test. A total of 39 patients were detected; 15 confirmed cases (culture-positive) and 24 suspected cases (symptom positive with equal to or greater than 1:160 titer of Salmonella O-antibody or 1:320 titer of H-antibody titer in Widal test). The epidemic curve showed a unimodal curve with a peak on the second week(17 May, 1994) and tailed down to the 5th week (22 28 May, 1994). The overall incidence rate of typhoid fever was 1.8 per 100 students; 1.5 (1.6 for male, 1.5 for female) in the middle school and 2. 4 (6. 2 for male, 0. 4 for female) in the high school. When contrasted with the students who did not drink water at all in the school, the relative risks of incidence rate of typhoid fever for the students who drank the underground water of the school, both underground water and water brought from home, or water brought from home only were 55.5, 19.0, and 3.0 respectively. Three classes which had especially high incidence rates of typhoid fever were located in the southern part of the main school building, where the contaminated underground water pump is located. These findings suggested that the source of infection was the contaminated underground water of the school. Both of the two underground water pumps were closed permanently and the public running water was supplied to the schools.
Drinking Water ; Groundwater ; Gyeongsangbuk-do* ; Hospitals, General ; Humans ; Incidence ; Male ; Outpatients ; Running ; Salmonella ; Typhoid Fever* ; Water

Maspin is a recently described gene with tumor suppressor activity. The gene product is a 42 kD protein with homology to the serpin family of protease inhibitors and may play a role as an inhibitor of tumor cell invasion. The prior observation that invasive breast cancers and their metastases showed decreased maspin protein expression by immunostaining supports this speculation. However, the role of maspin in breast cancer progression has not been studied in detail. We, therefore, studied maspin protein expression in a series of hyperplasia, atypical ductal hyperplasia, intraductal carcinoma and invasive carcinomas. Immunohistochemical staining (IHC) for maspin was performed on paraffin sections of 136 breast specimens using a commercially available monoclonal antibody. Among the 106 cases studied were 36 moderate/florid ductal hyperplasia, 11 atypical ductal hyperplasia (ADH), 29 intraductal carcinoma (IDC) (4 low grade, 13 intermediate grade, 12 high grade) and 30 invasive ductal carcinomas. Thirty cases of normal breast were also studied as control group. IHC stains were scored using a semiquantitative scoring system. The mean IHC scores for maspin for normal, moderate/florid hyperplasia, atypical ductal hyperplasia, intraductal carcinoma, and invasive carcinoma were 5.51 1.30, 7.36 0.72, 3.82 1.60, 4.48 2.69, 3.97 3.30, respectively. These scores for each category were statistically significant (p<0.05), except between ADH and IDC. Maspin protein expression was increased in most cases of moderate/florid hyperplasia, while maspin expression was more heterogeneous in ADH and IDC. In high grade IDC, maspin protein expression was stronger than low and intermediate grade IDC, and this suggests the possibility of a compensatory cellular response against the forces driving further tumor progression. Two thirds of invasive ductal carcinomas expressed maspin protein weakly and focally. All metastatic carcinomas of lymph nodes were negative for maspin. It is possible that high grade IDC with strong maspin expression may represent a subset less likely to progress to invasive cancer. This speculation merits investigation in clinical outcome studies.
Breast Neoplasms ; Breast* ; Carcinoma, Ductal* ; Carcinoma, Intraductal, Noninfiltrating* ; Coloring Agents ; Humans ; Hyperplasia* ; Lymph Nodes ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; Outcome Assessment (Health Care) ; Paraffin ; Protease Inhibitors

No abstract available.
Foreign Bodies* ; Foreign-Body Reaction ; Granuloma ; Granuloma, Foreign-Body* ; Squalene*

No abstract available.
Cesarean Section* ; Female ; Pregnancy ; Pulmonary Embolism*

Adaptive responses to diverse microbial pathogens might be limited in relatively few types. Host cell responses to pathogens are believed to be patterned or stereotyped along with species or class. We tried to compose the host response to Mycoplasma in terms of cellular gene expression. Although gene expression profile of two host HeLa and 293 cells were quite different each other, 30 genes were differentially expressed by mycoplasma infection in both of HeLa and 293 cells. Six of them (PR48, MADH4, MKPX, CRK, RBM7, NEK3) were related to cell cycle or proliferation. Another category of genes like IL1HY1, KLRF1, TNFSF14, GBP1 were host defense to elicit immune responses. With this set of genes, we establish the prediction model for mycoplasma contamination.
Cell Cycle ; Cells, Cultured* ; Gene Expression ; Mycoplasma Infections* ; Mycoplasma* ; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis ; Transcriptome

OBJECTIVE: Codeine may result in death or respiratory depression in children, particularly who are rapid metabolizer of CYP2D6, therefore it should be used cautiously among children under 12 years of age. This study was to investigate the prescribing pattern of codeine among children according to the age group, prescribed diagnosis, type of medical service and medical specialties. METHOD: We used Korea Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service-National Patient Sample (HIRA-NPS) database. Study subjects included inpatients or outpatients, who were prescribed codeine between January, 1, 2011 and December, 31, 2011. Contraindicated use of codeine was defined as the use of codeine at least one times under aged 12. Age groups were sub-classified according to the <2 years, 2-4 years, 5-8 years, and 9-11 years. Frequently prescribed diagnosis (ICD-10), type of medical service, and medical specialties were also described among codeine users under aged 12. RESULTS: Codeine users were 6,411 inpatients (9,958 prescriptions), and 3,397 outpatients (6,258 prescriptions), respectively. Codeine prescription under 12 years of age were 2.1% (210 prescriptions) among inpatients, and 12.3% (776 prescriptions) among outpatients (p-value<0.05). Outpatient prescriptions of codeine under 12 aged were issued mostly from primary care clinics and frequent diagnosis were unspecified bronchopneumonia (51.6%), and vasomotor rhinitis (23.7%). CONCLUSION: This study found prescribing of codeine under 12 aged is common in outpatient and primary clinics. Nationwide and community-based efforts should be needed to reduce inappropriate prescribing among children.
Bronchopneumonia ; Child* ; Codeine* ; Cytochrome P-450 CYP2D6 ; Diagnosis ; Drug Utilization Review ; Humans ; Inappropriate Prescribing ; Inpatients ; Insurance, Health ; Korea* ; Outpatients ; Prescriptions ; Primary Health Care ; Respiratory Insufficiency ; Rhinitis, Vasomotor

PURPOSE: The purposes of this study was to identify the effects of nursing practice environment, compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction on burnout in clinical nurses. METHODS: Participants selected for the final analysis were 208 nurses working in 2 general hospitals in Busan and Masan. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation and Hierarchial Multiple Regression with SPSS/WIN 18.0. RESULTS: Compassion fatigue had a significant positive effect on burnout, while Compassion satisfaction had a negative effect on burnout, but Nursing practice environment had no effect on burnout. The explained variance for burnout was 61% and compassion satisfaction was the most significant factor in burnout of nurses. CONCLUSION: The results of this study indicate that to reduce burnout in clinical nurses it is necessary to develop programs to increase nurses' compassion satisfaction and decrease compassion fatigue.
Busan ; Empathy* ; Fatigue* ; Hospitals, General ; Nursing* ; Professional Practice

No abstract available.
Lead Poisoning*

BACKGROUND: Osteoporosis is developed by progressive decrease of bone rnass from decreased collagen content of bone. Accurate measurement of bone collagen is necessary for the diagnosis of osteoporosis and it is possible by bone biopsy, however bone biopsy is not easy in clinical practice. Skin collagen is consist with type I collagen which is same type of bone collagen and progressive decrease of bone collagen is reflected by decrease of skin collagen. Since skin thickness reflect skin collagen amount, skin thickness measurement may be a useful method for the evaluation of osteoporosis. So ultrasonic skin thickness measurement was developed for the evaluation of osteoporosis. METHODS: A randomly selected 200 women aged fram 30 to 71 years old were asked to have their skin thickness measured as well as lumbar vertebral DXA(Norland, USA) bone densitometry. Except for the two women who failed to complete the study, 45(22.7%) of these women were diagnosed as normal, 74(37.4%) were osteopenic and 79(39.9%) were diagnosed as osteoporosis patients using the WHO criteria. Skin thickness was measured using 20MHz Osteoson DCIII (Minhorst, Germany) at the medial side of the upper arm. A minimal of Two scans were measured and the mean value was cakulated automatically. RESULTS: The correlation coefficient of skin thickness and age was -0.121(ns), DXA BMD(bone mineral density) and age was -0.420(P<0.01), skin thickness and DXA BMD L2-L4 was 0.181(P<0.05). Skin thickness was significantly correlated with body weight(correlation coefficient 0.254, P<0.01) and BMI(correlation coefficient 0.195, P<0.01). Furthermore, the mean and standard deviation of skin thickness in normal BMD group was 0.94+-0.021mm, osteopenic group was 0.92+-0.006mm, and osteoporotic group was 0.89+-0.018mm. There was statistically significant difference in the mean values of skin thickness between the three groups even adjusted with age and BMI(P<0.05). The mean and standard deviation of skin tbickness of healthy 20-40 year old women was 1.11+-0,023mm and their mean and standard deviation of L2-L4 mean BMD was 1.17+-0.145mg/cm2. The diagnostic predictability of skin thickness less than 1mm as the risk of osteoporosis(BMD T score less than -1.0) was evaluated. The sensitivity and the specificity of skin thickness less than 1mm being osteoporotic were 78,2% and 57.8% respectively. The positive and negative predictive value of the skin thickness less than 1mm being osteoporotic were 82.2% and 36.5% respectively. CONCLUSION: This study indicate that the skin thickaess measured with the ultrasound method show good correlatian with the bone density measured with conventional DXA at the lumbar vertebra and the skin thickness less than 1mm on the medial side of the opper arm is relatively sensitive in diagnosing osteoporosis risk in Korean women. The authors suggested that a large randomized control study to define the relationship between the skin thickness and the other determinants of bone turnover in the near future.
Aged ; Arm ; Biopsy ; Bone Density ; Collagen ; Collagen Type I ; Densitometry ; Diagnosis* ; Female ; Humans ; Osteoporosis ; Osteoporosis, Postmenopausal* ; Sensitivity and Specificity ; Skin* ; Spine ; Ultrasonics ; Ultrasonography