BACKGROUNDS: An inhibitory effect of magnesium L-ascorbyl-2-phosphate (VC-PMG, a stable derivative of ascorbic acid) on melanogenesis has been described. Furthermore, glabridin in licorice is known to have inhibitory effects on melanogenesis and widely used for raw materials for depigmenting agents. OBJECTIVE: The purposes of this study are to provide objective data by measuring the visual clinical effects of VC-PMG with the colorimeter and to promote the development of de-pigmenting agents. METHODS: 20 volunteers joined the study. With an artificial UVB irradiation, eight tanned areas were made on the inner side of the forearm. During two months, each tanned area was treated with five whitening cosmetics with 3% VC-PMG and increasing concentration of licorice from 0% to 3%. Darkness degree of each area was measured weekly by the colorimeter and the visual assessment. RESULTS: For all cosmetics, whitening effect was measured by colorimeter and visual as-sessment. The cosmetic containing VC-PMG 3% and licorice 1% had more whitening effect than any other cosmetics of different concentrations. Moreover, VC-PMG 3% alone also had whitening effect in some volunteers. CONCLUSION: VC-PMG was clinically found to have whitening effect.
Ascorbic Acid* ; Darkness ; Forearm ; Glycyrrhiza ; Magnesium* ; Triacetoneamine-N-Oxyl ; Vitamins* ; Volunteers

This study was conducted to investigate distribution of the house dust mites in the bedroom of allergic rhinitis patients in Pusan. From July to December 1995, 51 dust samples were drawn from the bedroom of the patients by using electronic vaccum cleaner. House dust mites were isolated from 50mg dust by applying the modified wet sieving method. The results were as follows: 1 Out of a total 49 dust samples(96.1%) were isolated house mites. 2 Total 977 mites were collected and identified the most prevalent house mites was Pyroglypidae mite with 92.2%. Among them D.pteronyssinus was predominant species. 3 In 1gm of the house dust, 100-499 mites were found in 17 samples(33.3%), more then 500 mites in 12 samples (23.6%). 4 The density of Pyoglypidae mite was close associated with the month. 5 The density of house dust mite was not affected by the type of house, region and the relative humidity of the bed room
Busan* ; Dust* ; Humans ; Humidity ; Mites ; Pyroglyphidae* ; Rhinitis*

PURPOSE: This study was done to investigate the degree of self-care, family support and depression, and relationship among these variables for elder with diabetes mellitus. METHOD: Participants were 202 diabetic patients, 65 years or over, living in Seoul, Korea. Data were collected using the self-care tool for diabetic patients by Kim (1996), the family support tool for diabetic patients by Park (1984), and Korea\' s BDI scale by Lee (1995). RESULTS: Of the patients, 43.1% showed HbA1c levels than higher 7%. The highest mean score was for self-care for medication compliance, and the lowest for blood glucose testing compliance. Factors affecting self-care were employment, education, HbA1c level, diabetic self-care education and complications. Factors affecting family support were living with family, diabetic self-care education, hospitalization and complications. Factors affecting depression were gender, living with family and complications. All of these factors were significant. Patients experiencing depression were 16.8% of patients. There was a significant positive correlation between self-care and family support, and significant negative correlations between self-care and depression, and family support and depression. CONCLUSION: For more effective management of diabetes mellitus in elders, improvement in self-care compliance, and family support are needed
Aged ; Blood Glucose ; Compliance ; Depression ; Diabetes Mellitus ; Employment ; Hospitalization ; Humans ; Korea ; Medication Adherence ; Self Care

No abstract available.
Korea* ; Nontuberculous Mycobacteria*

Angiosarcoma is a very rare malignant tumor of endothelial cell origin. We experienced a case of angiosarcoma presented with massive pleural effusion, which was considered as a metastasis from right kidney. A 44-year-old male patient was admitted due to dyspnea for one month. He had a history of transient hematuria 3 months before admission, which disappeared spontaneously Chest roentgenography showed total haziness in left hemithorax with multiple nodular shadows in right lung. Abdominal ultrasonogram showed a single heterogeneous hyperechoic mass, measuring about 7.3×7.1×6.5cm in size in the upper and mid-pole of the right kidney, involving. renal sinus. Computed tomography of the chest revealed highly enhanced multiple pulmonary and subpleural nodules with loculated pleurisy. In bronchoscopic finding, a fungating, hypervascular tumor mass was noticed at the orifice of anterior basal segment of left lower lung after removal of tenaceous mucus Pleural and bronchoscopic biopsies showed findings of angiosarcoma confirmed by immunochemical stains with factor VIII related antigen(+), laminin(+) and vimentin(+), and by characteristic electronmicroscopic findings. Massive pleural effusion was controlled with several times of pleurodesis in both pleural spaces.
Adult ; Biopsy ; Coloring Agents ; Dyspnea ; Endothelial Cells ; Factor VIII ; Hemangiosarcoma* ; Hematuria ; Humans ; Kidney ; Lung ; Male ; Mucus ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; Pleural Effusion* ; Pleurisy ; Pleurodesis ; Radiography ; Thorax ; Ultrasonography

PURPOSE: Leptin is a hormone, encoded by ob gene in adipocytes and regulates food intake and energy expenditure. The serum concentration of leptin is known to be proportional to the amount of body fat but the regulation of leptin for growth and development in childhood is not clear. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the correlation of serum leptin levels to gender, pubertal development and sex steroid in children. METHODS: Serum leptin levels were measured by RIA in 145 Korean children of both sexes, age 8-16yr, and were compared according to body mass index, gender and pubertal stage. The correlations of leptin with testosterone and estradiol were also analized. RESULTS: A positive relationship was observed for leptin levels with body mass index(in male:r=0.63, P<0.001, in female:r=0.80, P<0.001). The mean leptin level of girls was higher than that of boys(7.50+/-.83ng/mL vs 4.11+/-.72ng/mL, P<0.05) in lean children but there was no significant difference in obese group. An analysis according to the pubertal development showed an increase of leptin level in girls while leptin decreased in boys at overt puberty. Serum leptin levels of boys in puberty correlated inversely with testosterone(r=-0.52, P<0.001) but leptin of girls did not have significant correlation with estradiol. CONCLUSION: Serum leptin level increases in girls and decreases in boys as the pubertal development proceeds. The relationships between leptin level and pubertal developement show gender difference and it might be explained in part by suppressive effects of androgen in male.
Adipocytes ; Adipose Tissue ; Adolescent ; Body Mass Index ; Child* ; Eating ; Energy Metabolism ; Estradiol ; Female ; Growth and Development ; Humans ; Leptin* ; Male ; Puberty ; Testosterone

Angiolymphoid hyperplasia with eosinophilia (ALHE) and Kimura's disease were classified as same disease in the past. Since there are many different clinical and histopathological characteristics that warranted their distinction, they are classified as different disease now. Six cases of Kimura's disease in upper extremity have been reported in Korean literature but ALHE in upper extremity has not been reported yet. We experienced a case of surgically treated ALHE in the upper arm and report this case with review of literature.
Angiolymphoid Hyperplasia with Eosinophilia ; Arm ; Eosinophilia ; Upper Extremity

BACKGROUND: The conventional indocyanine green retention rate at 15 minutes (ICG R15) test is inefficient and inconvenient because it requires the use of a manual spectrophotometer and several samples per patient. This study aimed to establish the automation of the ICG R15 test using an automated clinical chemistry analyzer, and to evaluate the calculation of R15 with a small number of samples. METHODS: The performance of the AU5832 (Beckman Coulter, USA) for determining ICG concentration was evaluated in accordance with the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) guidelines. The R15 results for 77 patients determined by spectrophotometry and AU5832 were compared. We evaluated the calculation of R15 with three samples, except for one sample in which the results had been obtained previously, at 5, 10, and 15 minutes after injection of ICG into the patients, and compared the results with those obtained with four samples. RESULTS: The automated ICG test using the AU5832 system showed proper performances according to CLSI. Although the difference in the R15 results between the two methods was within the 95% confidence interval, the R15 was adjusted by the regression equation because it was slightly lower according to the automated method compared with the manual method. The R15 with three samples (0, 5, and 15 minutes) showed the best correlation with conventional R15 with four samples (r2=0.996). Compared with the manual method, the R15 result using the AU5832 showed excellent agreement with four samples (kappa value 0.904) and with three samples (kappa value 0.880). CONCLUSIONS: The ICG R15 test using the AU5832 system is comparable with the conventional method in clinical use.
Automation ; Chemistry, Clinical* ; Humans ; Indocyanine Green* ; Methods ; Spectrophotometry

The AdvanSure tuberculosis/non-tuberculous mycobacterium (TB/NTM) PCR (LG Life Science, Korea) and COBAS TaqMan Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) PCR (Roche Diagnostics, USA) are commonly used in clinical microbiology laboratories. We aimed to evaluate these two commercial real-time PCR assays for detection of MTB in a large set of clinical samples over a two-year period. AdvanSure TB/NTM PCR and COBAS TaqMan MTB PCR were performed on 9,119 (75.2%) and 3,010 (24.8%) of 12,129 (9,728 respiratory and 2,401 non-respiratory) MTB specimens, with 361 (4.0%) and 102 (3.4%) acid-fast bacilli (AFB)-positive results, respectively. In MTB culture, 788 (6.5%) MTB and 514 (4.2%) NTM were identified. The total sensitivity and specificity of the AdvanSure assay were 67.8% (95% confidence interval [CI], 63.9-71.6) and 98.3% (95% CI, 98.0-98.6), while those of the COBAS TaqMan assay were 67.2% (95% CI, 60.0-73.8) and 98.4% (95% CI, 97.9-98.9), respectively. The sensitivities and specificities of the AdvanSure and COBAS TaqMan assays for AFB-positive and AFB-negative samples were comparable. Furthermore, the AdvanSure assay showed fewer invalid results compared with the COBAS TaqMan assay (5.0 vs. 20.4 invalid results/1,000 tests, P<0.001). AdvanSure assay represents a comparable yet more reliable method than COBAS TaqMan for the identification of mycobacteria in routine clinical microbiology.
DNA, Bacterial/genetics/metabolism ; Humans ; Mycobacterium tuberculosis/*genetics/isolation & purification ; Reagent Kits, Diagnostic ; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction ; Republic of Korea ; Sensitivity and Specificity ; Tuberculosis, Pulmonary/diagnosis

BACKGROUND: Peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) has been widely used as a substi-tute of bone marrow transplantation for the treatment of various solid tumors or hematologic malig-nancies. The success of PBSCT is correlated with peripheral blood CD34+ cell count per kilogram of the recipient body weight. Standardization of flow cytometric CD34+ cell enumeration was improved by the modified International Society of Hematotherapy and Gene Engineering (ISHAGE) protocol. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the peripheral parameters (WBCs, mononuclear cells, the CD 34+ cells) that may predict the total CD34+ cell count in the harvest product, using the Stem-Kit (Beck-man Coulter Inc., Fullerton, CA, USA). METHODS: The study tested 88 PBSC harvests and peripheral blood (PB) on the day before collection from 26 patients. The CD34+ cells were analyzed using the Stem-Kit. The WBC and MNC count were measured by Coulter STKS (Beckman Coulter Inc.). The correlation and regression analysis between peripheral parameters (WBCs, MNCs, CD34+ cells) and the total CD34+ cell count in the harvest product were performed. RESULTS: The CD34+ cell count per weight (kg) of 88 PBSC harvests was 1.59 +/- 2.61 (0.01 -17.35). The mean number of WBC, MNC, and CD34+ cell in PB prior to harvest were 10.57 +/- 8.36 (1.50 - 32.50) X 10(3)/micro L, 1.85 +/- 1.28 (0.39- 7.43) X 10(3)/micro L, and 17.21 +/- 33.19 (0.12-239.19)/micro L, respectively. With the CD34+ cells numbering under 3/micro L in peripheral blood (PB), we could not harvest more than 0.5 X 10(6) /kg PBSC. With the cells numbering 3-6/micro L (59%) and 10- 20/micro L (89%), however, we could harvest more than 0.5 X 10(6) /kg and 1.0 X 10(6) /kg, respectively. More than 2.0 X 10(6)/kg of PBSC was collected with 10-20/micro L (31%). The peripheral blood CD34+ cell count prior to harvest significantly correlated with the total CD34+ cell count in the harvest product (r=0.97, P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Peripheral blood CD34+ cell enumeration using the Stem-Kit was an efficient predictor of when to harvest peripheral blood stem cells after mobilization therapy. We could not collected the CD34+ cell in harvest product of more than 0.5 X 10(6)/kg if the peripheral blood CD34+ cell count was less than 3/micro L.
Body Weight ; Bone Marrow Transplantation ; Cell Count* ; Humans ; Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Transplantation ; Stem Cells*