The purpose of this study was to identify the barrier factors of health behaviors of urban and rural elderly and to compare the health behaviors and level of barriers between two groups, and finally to get the basic informations about the adequate nursing strategies to promote the health state of urban and rural elderly. The subjects of this study were 177 over the age of 65, 81 elderly lived in Seoul and 96 elderly lived in rural areas. The instruments for this study were the health behavior scale(14 items) and the barrier scale (118 items) developed by Gu et al(2003). For the data analysis, SPSS PC program was utilized for descriptive statistics, chi2- test, t-test, Pearson correlation. The results of this study were ; 1. The mean score of health behaviors (range 1-4) was 2.69 in urban elderly and 2.33 in rural elderly ; there was significant difference(t=5.03, P=.00). 2. There were significant differences in levels of barriers(range 1-3) between the two groups, such as calcium intake(t=-3.16, P=.00), regular exercise(t=-3.80, P=.00), exercise time(t=-5.54, P=.00), use of stress reduction method(t=-3.45, P=.00), regular check up(t=-3.89, P=.00), vaccination(t= -3.83, P=.00). Higher levels of barriers were found in rural elderly than in urban elderly.3. Lack of habituation, lack of will power and lack of knowledge in calcium intake; lack of time, lack of habituatuion, lack of family support, lack of will power and lack of environment in exercise; lack of perceived benefit, lack of time, lack of will power and lack of knowledge in use of stress reduction method; lack of time, lack of interest, lack of habituation and lack of will power in disease prevention were significantly higher in rural elderly than in urban elderly.In the conclusion, nursing interventions should be planned based on the social environment of elderly. To promote the health state of elderly, interventions to decrease the barrier levels and to reduce the barrier factors to health behaviors should be implemented.
Aged* ; Calcium ; Health Behavior* ; Humans ; Nursing ; Seoul ; Social Environment ; Statistics as Topic

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to analyze college sudents' attitudes toward people with disabilities, and factors affecting the attitudes, and further to examine possible ways to improve the attitudes. and to furnish guideline of curriculum and practice in rehabilitation nursing on the basis of this analysis. METHOD: A descriptive. relational study design was used. The subjects of this study were 448 college students. A convenient sampling is used. Data were collected through 4 types of previous questionnaires used to examine attitude from May 1 to May 30, 2003. RESULT: 1. The attitude toward people with disabilities whose mean is 3.762 was responded somewhat negatively. Especially, a contact tension whose mean was 4.00 is high. 2. As a result of analyzing the attitudes of college students toward people with disabilities. some factors were statistically significant. They were experience of contact with the disabled. concern toward the disabled, voluntary work related to the disabled, and disability experience education. 3. The more negative experience of people with disabilities and the lower stereotype of disability and the higher effects of parents, teachers, and mass media, then the more positive response of peoples attitude with disabilities. 4. The main factors of determining the attitude of people with disabilities were the stereotype of disability. contact experience concern about disability, voluntary work experience. CONCLUSION: These results suggested that an appropriate educational intervention and strategy is needed in order to change the attitudes of college students toward people with disabilities. Also experimental researches are needed to do it.
Curriculum ; Disabled Persons ; Education ; Humans ; Mass Media ; Parents ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Rehabilitation Nursing

BACKGROUND: Obesity is not anly one of the risk factors that affects the prevalence and aggravation of chronic diseases, but is also the cause of social unfitness because slimness has become a standard of beauty. We surveyed on the satisfaction about self body image, the factors which are related to it and weight control behavior of the adolescents in a local area of Korea. METHODS: The survey was performed in a high school of Pocheon on August, 1996. Five classes out of 14 classes in 1st and 2nd grade were selected. The body mass index(BMI) was calculated from the measured height and weight. The satisfaction about body image which was estimated by the difference between present body image and wanted body image in 9 graded figures of body image was obtained from the questionnaire. The information about sex, religion, history of being teased about body image, body image of their parents, mean duration of watching TV in a day, body esteem, and binge-eating was obtained from the questiannaire and we evaluated the relationship between all of the above with BMI and body image satisfaction. We also investigated on the interest in education about weight control and efforts made by adolescents from the questionnaire on weight control behavior. RESULTS: Total of 224 students participated in this study and only 14.7% of them were satisfied with their body image. 58.9% wanted weight reduction and 26.4% wanted weight gain. They were more dissatisfied with their body image when they were girls(p<0.01), had the experience of being teased about their body image(p<0.01), had low body esteem(p<0.01), and had high BMl(p<0.01). We could not find statistically significant relationship between body image satisfaction and other factors such as religion, the duration of watching TV in a day, the body image of their parents and binge eating. 64.3% of the subjects tried to control their weight and most(87.5%) tried to lose weight. The selected methods were diet control(65.3%) and exercise(52.1%) and the most preferred method of diet control was skipping meah(45.7%). CONCLUSIONS: Most of adolescents were not satisfied with their body image and this dissatisfaction was related to gender, history of being teased about their body image, BMI, and body esteem. Many of them had tried to lose weight and among the methods of weight reduction, there were behaviors that were injurous to their health and growth
Adolescent* ; Beauty ; Body Image* ; Bulimia ; Chronic Disease ; Diet ; Education ; Humans ; Korea ; Obesity ; Parents ; Prevalence ; Risk Factors ; Weight Gain ; Weight Loss ; Surveys and Questionnaires

PURPOSE: This study was conducted to suggest direction and strategy of safety education proper to elementary school children. METHOD: The subject of this survey consisted of 313 3rd-5th grade from 4 elementary schools in Kyungi-Do and Kwangwon-Do. Data were collected from March to May, 2002 using a questionnaire about "safety education needs", "knowledge about injury prevention", "attitude about injury prevention. RESULT: 1. The degree of safety education needs showed averaged 77.50 on the basis of 100 points. 2. The degree of knowledge and attitude about injury prevention showed averaged 72.81 and 81.74 seperately on the basis of 100 points. 3. With the respect to the demographic characteristics, there were stastically significant differences in safety education need according to children's grade(F=8.692, p=.003), sex(t=-2.059, p=.040), family type(t=-2.229, p=.027) and in knowledge & attitude about injury prevention, there statiscally significant difference according to experience of injury prevention education(t=3.058, p=.003; t=5.308, p=.000) each. 4. The level of safety education needs is correlated at signficant level with knowledge and attitude about injury prevention of childrens(r=.166, p=.048; r=.265, p=.001) and between knowledge and attitude about injury prevention, there was significant correlation (r=.427, p=.000). CONCLUSION: From this results, nurses can plan safety education program appropriate to children's needs, level of knowledge and attitude about injury prevention.
Child* ; Education* ; Gangwon-do ; Humans ; Child Health ; Surveys and Questionnaires

The objective of our study was to evaluate the dietary intakes and eating habit for seniors utilizing ten different social welfare centers in Seoul, Korea. The total number of subjects of this study was 543 (male: 199, female: 344) of 60 years of age or older. The survey was performed through personal interview questionnaires from May 3rd to June 1st 2006. After assigning subjects to four categories based on family type, single, couple, joint family, and other, these categories were compared with the estimated total nutrient intakes and eating habit. Validity was assessed by comparison with 24-hour dietary recalls and dietary variety score (DVS). The results showed that senior in single family type was far lower than that of couple family type in terms of frequency of meal per day and intake of snacks. Dietary variety score represented that a single female with social security beneficiary showed the lowest variety score compared with other family type. The lunch meal provided by social welfare center turned out to be the most nutritious diet and had significant proportion of daily intakes in essential nutrients such as protein, iron, vitamin A, and vitamin C. Taken together, the family type was a significant factor and the accompaniment is another effector on dietary pattern in the elderly. We strongly suggest that the current lunch program in welfare center should be expanded to breakfast meal, and furthermore the small commodity program is also needed to provide the elderly with meal for social communication.
Aged ; Ascorbic Acid ; Breakfast ; Diet ; Eating* ; Female ; Humans ; Iron ; Joints ; Korea ; Lunch ; Meals ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Seoul* ; Snacks ; Social Security ; Social Welfare* ; Vitamin A

Signal transducer and activator of transcription 4 (STAT4), a STAT family member, mediates interleukin 12 (IL12) signal transduction. IL12 is known to be related to calorie-restricted status. In the central nervous system, IL12 also enhances the production of nitric oxide (NO), which regulates food intake. In this study, the expression of neuronal NO synthase (Nos1), which is also related to food intake, was investigated in the hypothalamic areas of Stat4 knockout (KO) mice using nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate-diaphorase (NADPH-d) histochemistry, a marker for neurons expressing Nos1 enzyme. Western blots were also performed to evaluate Nos1 and Fos expression. Wild-type Balb/c (WT group, n=10 male) and Stat4 KO mice (Stat4 KO group, n=8 male) were used. The body weight and daily food intake in the WT group were 22.4+/-0.3 and 4.4 g per day, while those in the Stat4 KO group were 18.7+/-0.4 and 1.8 g per day, respectively. Stat4 mice had lower body weight and food intake than Balb/c mice. Optical intensities of NADPH-d-positive neurons in the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) and lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) of the Stat4 KO group were significantly higher than those of the WT group. Western blotting analysis revealed that the hypothalamic Nos1 and Fos expression of the Stat4 KO group was up-regulated, compared to that in the WT group. These results suggest that Stat4 may be related to the regulation of food intake and expression of Nos1 in the hypothalamus.
Animals ; Blotting, Western ; Body Weight ; Central Nervous System ; Eating ; Humans ; Hypothalamic Area, Lateral ; Hypothalamus ; Interleukin-12 ; Mice ; Mice, Knockout ; NAD ; Neurons ; Nitric Oxide ; Nitric Oxide Synthase ; Paraventricular Hypothalamic Nucleus ; Signal Transduction ; STAT4 Transcription Factor

Accumulated evidence suggests that sporadic cases of Alzheimer's disease (AD) make up more than 95% of total AD patients, and diabetes has been implicated as a strong risk factor for the development of AD. Diabetes shares pathological features of AD, such as impaired insulin signaling, increased oxidative stress, increased amyloid-beta (Aβ) production, tauopathy and cerebrovascular complication. Due to shared pathologies between the two diseases, anti-diabetic drugs may be a suitable therapeutic option for AD treatment. In this article, we will discuss the well-known pathologies of AD, including Aβ plaques and tau tangles, as well as other mechanisms shared in AD and diabetes including reactive glia and the breakdown of blood brain barrier in order to evaluate the presence of any potential, indirect or direct links of pre-diabetic conditions to AD pathology. In addition, clinical evidence of high incidence of diabetic patients to the development of AD are described together with application of anti-diabetic medications to AD patients.
Alzheimer Disease ; Blood-Brain Barrier ; Encephalitis ; Humans ; Incidence ; Insulin ; Neuroglia ; Oxidative Stress ; Pathology ; Risk Factors ; Tauopathies

BACKGROUND: The performance of Cell-Dyn Sapphire (Abbott Diagnostic, USA) was compared to the Bayer Advia 2120 (Bayer Diagnostics, USA), Sysmex XE-2100 (Sysmex Corporation, Japan), and reference microscopy. METHODS: Three hundred samples for routine CBC and WBC differentials were randomly chosen for a comparison analysis. The Cell-Dyn Sapphire system was evaluated according to the linearity, imprecision, inter-instrument correlations, and white blood cell differential. RESULTS: The CBC parameters (WBC, RBC, hemoglobin and platelet) showed a significant linearity with correlation coefficients greater than 0.99 (P<0.0001). Coefficients of variation (CV) for withinrun and differential count of WBC were less than 5% except for Total CV for monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils and within-run CV for low valued eosinophils. The correlation coefficients with manual count were lower in monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils than in neutrophils and lymphocytes. The correlation with other hematology anlayzers was significant exclusive of basophils. CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrate that the Cell-Dyn Sapphire has a good linearity, an acceptable reproducibility, a minimal carryover, and a comparable performance with the sysmex XE-2100 and Advia 2120.
Analysis of Variance ; Autoanalysis ; Blood Cell Count/*instrumentation/methods ; Blood Specimen Collection ; Diagnostic Errors ; Humans ; Reproducibility of Results ; Sensitivity and Specificity