PURPOSE: The study was undertaken to assess levels of aggression, and to determine factors affecting aggression among South Korean middle school students. METHODS: A descriptive study was conducted using self-report questionnaires. The participants were 340 girls and boys from two middle schools and 302 questionnaires were used for the final data analysis. Aggression, academic stress, depression, self esteem, decision-making competency, and happiness were measured. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics including t tests, one-way analysis of variance, Pearson's correlation coefficients and multiple regressions. RESULTS: Aggression had significant correlations with academic stress (r = .21, p < .001), depression (r = .43, p < .001), self esteem (r = -.25, p < .001), decision-making competency (r = -.25, p < .001), and happiness (r = -.21, p < .001). Mean score for aggression was 2.49 out of 5. Significant explanatory variables for aggression were grade (t = 4.39, p < .001), academic stress (t = 2.78, p = .006), and depression (t = 5.03, p < .001). The explanatory power of these factors was 26.9%, and this was statistically significant (F = 16.06, p < .001). CONCLUSION: Findings indicate that depression, academic stress, and grade (second grade) influence aggression. To decrease aggressive behavior, it is necessary to provide systematic and political programs in schools and local communities that can ameliorate negative emotional factors like depression and academic stress. Additionally, development of positive factors such as self esteem, decision-making skills, and happiness in middle school students is important to reduce aggression.
Aggression/*psychology ; Decision Making ; Depression/psychology ; Female ; Happiness ; Humans ; Male ; *Psychology, Adolescent ; Questionnaires ; Republic of Korea ; Risk Factors ; Self Concept ; Stress, Psychological/psychology ; Students/*psychology

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between childhood trauma and psychotic symptoms in schizophrenic patients after controlling for the possible confounding factors, such as depression and dissociative symptoms. Ninety-eight schizophrenic inpatients participated. Childhood trauma was examined using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaires (CTQ), which consists of physical abuse (PA), sexual abuse (SA), emotional abuse (EA), physical neglect (PN), and emotional neglect (EN). Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), Dissociative Experience Scale (DES), and Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI) were also administered. Data were analyzed by partial correlation and general linear model. The total score of CTQ was positively correlated with positive, general, and total scores of PANSS. All five types of childhood trauma were associated with dissociative symptoms. EA and EN were positively correlated with depressive symptoms. Only SA significantly predicted positive symptoms of schizophrenia after controlling for age, sex, BDI, and DES scores, with a dose-response relationship between SA and positive symptoms.
Depression ; Humans ; Inpatients ; Linear Models ; Multivariate Analysis* ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Schizophrenia* ; Sex Offenses

OBJECTIVES: The aims of this study were to investigate the pattern of stress coping strategies and the effects of stress coping strategies on quality of life in patients with schizophrenia. METHODS: Stress coping strategies and quality of life were examined using Ways of Coping Checklist and Schizophrenia Quality of Life Scale for 98 patients with schizophrenia. Stress coping strategies were composed of problem-focused coping, social support seeking, emotion-focused coping, and wishful thinking. Among these, problem-focused coping and social support seeking were active coping strategies while emotion-focused coping and wishful thinking were passive coping strategies. Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI) were also administered. RESULTS: Active coping scores were higher than passive coping scores in patients with schizophrenia. Quality of life was higher in the active coping group compared to the passive coping group. Active coping usage was a significant predictor of higher quality of life even after controlling for gender, age, PANSS, and BDI scores. CONCLUSION: Patients with schizophrenia used more active coping strategies than passive coping strategies, which showed significant association with higher quality of life. A treatment program to provide education on use of active coping strategies in a proper and flexible way might contribute to enhanced quality of life in patients with schizophrenia.
Adaptation, Psychological ; Checklist ; Depression ; Education ; Humans ; Quality of Life* ; Schizophrenia* ; Stress, Psychological ; Thinking

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is the serious and fatal drug-associated adverse effect, but its incidence is very low and individual variation in severity is substantial. Acetaminophen (APAP)-induced liver injury accounts for >50% of reported DILI cases but little is known for the cause of individual variations in the severity. Intrinsic genetic variation is considered a key element but the identity of the genes was not well-established. Here, pre-biopsy method and microarray technique was applied to uncover the key genes for APAP-induced liver injury in mice, and a cause and effect experiment employing quantitative real-time PCR was conducted to confirm the correlation between the uncovered genes and APAP-induced hepatotoxicity. We identified the innately and differentially expressed genes of mice susceptible to APAP-induced hepatotoxicity in the pre-biopsied liver tissue before APAP treatment through microarray analysis of the global gene expression profiles (Affymetrix GeneChip® Mouse Gene 1.0 ST for 28,853 genes). Expression of 16 genes including Gdap10, Lpl, Gabra3 and Ccrn4l were significantly different (t-test: FDR <10%) more than 1.5 fold in the susceptible animals than resistant. To confirm the association with the susceptibility to APAP-induced hepatotoxicity, another set of animals were measured for the expression level of selected 4 genes (higher two and lower two genes) in the liver pre-biopsy and their sensitivity to APAP-induced hepatotoxicity was evaluated by post hoc. Notably, the expressions of Gabra3 and Lpl were significantly correlated with the severity of liver injury (p<0.05) demonstrating that these genes may be linked to the susceptibility to APAP-induced hepatotoxicity.
Acetaminophen ; Animals ; Drug-Induced Liver Injury ; Genetic Variation ; Incidence ; Lipoprotein Lipase* ; Lipoproteins* ; Liver ; Methods ; Mice ; Microarray Analysis ; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction ; Receptors, GABA-A* ; Toxicogenetics ; Transcriptome

Objectives: The household secondary attack rate (SAR) of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is an important indicator for community transmission. This study aimed to characterize transmission by comparing household SARs and identifying risk factors during the periods of Delta and Omicron variant predominance in Republic of Korea. Methods: We defined the period of Delta variant predominance (Delta period) as July 25, 2021 to January 15, 2022, and the period of Omicron variant predominance (Omicron period) as February 7 to September 3, 2022. The number of index cases included was 214,229 for the Delta period and 5,521,393 for the Omicron period. To identify the household SARs and risk factors for each period, logistic regression was performed to determine the adjusted odds ratio (aOR). Results: The SAR was 35.2% for the Delta period and 43.1% for the Omicron period. The aOR of infection was higher in 2 groups, those aged 0 to 18 years and ≥75 years, compared to those aged 19 to 49 years. Unvaccinated individuals (vs. vaccinated individuals) and individuals experiencing initial infection (vs. individuals experiencing a second or third infection) had an increased risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2. Conclusion: This study analyzed the household SARs and risk factors. We hope that the results can help develop age-specific immunization plans and responses to reduce the SAR in preparation for emerging infectious diseases or potential new variants of SARS-CoV-2.

BACKGROUND: Since the recent introduction of radioimmunotherapy (RIT) using antibodies against cluster of differentiation (CD) 45 for the treatment of lymphoma, the clinical significance of the CD45 antigen has been increasing steadily. Here, we analyzed CD45 expression on lymphocyte subsets using flow cytometry in order to predict the susceptibility of normal lymphocytes to RIT. METHODS: Peripheral blood specimens were collected from 14 healthy individuals aged 25-54 yr. The mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of the cell surface antigens was measured using a FACSCanto II system (Becton Dickinson Bioscience, USA). MFI values were converted into antibody binding capacity values using a Quantum Simply Cellular microbead kit (Bangs Laboratories, Inc., USA). RESULTS: Among the lymphocyte subsets, the expression of CD45 was the highest (725,368+/-42,763) on natural killer T (NKT) cells, 674,030+/-48,187 on cytotoxic/suppressor T cells, 588,750+/-48,090 on natural killer (NK) cells, 580,211+/-29,168 on helper T (Th) cells, and 499,436+/-21,737 on B cells. The Th cells and NK cells expressed a similar level of CD45 (P=0.502). Forward scatter was the highest in NKT cells (P<0.05), whereas side scatter differed significantly between each of the lymphocyte subsets (P<0.05). CD3 expression was highest in the Th and NKT cells. CONCLUSIONS: NKT cells express the highest levels of CD45 antigen. Therefore, this lymphocyte subset would be most profoundly affected by RIT or pretargeted RIT. The monitoring of this lymphocyte subset during and after RIT should prove helpful.
Adult ; Antibodies/immunology ; Antigens, CD45/*analysis/immunology ; B-Lymphocytes/immunology/metabolism ; CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes/immunology/metabolism ; Female ; Flow Cytometry/*methods ; Fluorescein-5-isothiocyanate/chemistry ; Fluorescent Dyes/chemistry ; Humans ; Killer Cells, Natural/immunology/metabolism ; Lymphocytes/immunology/*metabolism ; Lymphoma/radiotherapy ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Natural Killer T-Cells/immunology/metabolism ; Protein Binding ; Radioimmunotherapy ; Reagent Kits, Diagnostic ; T-Lymphocytes, Helper-Inducer/immunology/metabolism

BACKGROUND: Since the recent introduction of radioimmunotherapy (RIT) using antibodies against cluster of differentiation (CD) 45 for the treatment of lymphoma, the clinical significance of the CD45 antigen has been increasing steadily. Here, we analyzed CD45 expression on lymphocyte subsets using flow cytometry in order to predict the susceptibility of normal lymphocytes to RIT. METHODS: Peripheral blood specimens were collected from 14 healthy individuals aged 25-54 yr. The mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of the cell surface antigens was measured using a FACSCanto II system (Becton Dickinson Bioscience, USA). MFI values were converted into antibody binding capacity values using a Quantum Simply Cellular microbead kit (Bangs Laboratories, Inc., USA). RESULTS: Among the lymphocyte subsets, the expression of CD45 was the highest (725,368+/-42,763) on natural killer T (NKT) cells, 674,030+/-48,187 on cytotoxic/suppressor T cells, 588,750+/-48,090 on natural killer (NK) cells, 580,211+/-29,168 on helper T (Th) cells, and 499,436+/-21,737 on B cells. The Th cells and NK cells expressed a similar level of CD45 (P=0.502). Forward scatter was the highest in NKT cells (P<0.05), whereas side scatter differed significantly between each of the lymphocyte subsets (P<0.05). CD3 expression was highest in the Th and NKT cells. CONCLUSIONS: NKT cells express the highest levels of CD45 antigen. Therefore, this lymphocyte subset would be most profoundly affected by RIT or pretargeted RIT. The monitoring of this lymphocyte subset during and after RIT should prove helpful.
Adult ; Antibodies/immunology ; Antigens, CD45/*analysis/immunology ; B-Lymphocytes/immunology/metabolism ; CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes/immunology/metabolism ; Female ; Flow Cytometry/*methods ; Fluorescein-5-isothiocyanate/chemistry ; Fluorescent Dyes/chemistry ; Humans ; Killer Cells, Natural/immunology/metabolism ; Lymphocytes/immunology/*metabolism ; Lymphoma/radiotherapy ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Natural Killer T-Cells/immunology/metabolism ; Protein Binding ; Radioimmunotherapy ; Reagent Kits, Diagnostic ; T-Lymphocytes, Helper-Inducer/immunology/metabolism