BACKGROUND: We aimed to conduct a systematic review of previously published material to evaluate the diagnostic effectiveness of PCR-based tests in detecting BRAF mutation. METHODS: Eight Korean databases, including KoreaMed, Ovid-MEDLINE, and Ovid-EMBASE were used to identify relevant published studies. Nine studies describing usage of real-time PCR, dual-priming oligonucleotide (DPO)-multiplex real-time PCR and allele-specific PCR were included in the final assessment. Two reviewers screened all references independently for assessing the quality of the included articles and extracted data. RESULTS: The rate of detection of the BRAF mutations was lower in the Korean population (11.1-17.2%) than that in the Western population (36.7-82.2%). The diagnostic accuracy of the BRAF mutation tests was assessed on the basis of four previous reports, all of which employed real-time PCR on malignant melanoma. In fact, the diagnostic accuracy of real-time PCR was found to be higher than that of sequencing tests (pooled sensitivity, 0.96; pooled specificity, 0.83; and summary receiver operating characteristic area under the curve, 0.99). In addition, we found that there was no publication bias in meta-analysis. The concordance rate of the BRAF mutation tests compared with reference tests was 87.9-98.1%. CONCLUSIONS: Real-time PCR for the detection of the BRAF gene mutation is an effective technology for determining the appropriateness of treatment with BRAF kinase inhibitors in terminal stage cancer as well as metastatic and malignant melanoma.
Melanoma* ; Phosphotransferases ; Polymerase Chain Reaction ; Publication Bias ; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction ; ROC Curve ; Sensitivity and Specificity

BACKGROUND: To develop a Korean version of the QOLIE-31 and to confirm its psychometric properties. METHODS: The QOLIE-31 was adapted to Korean language through a translation-back translation procedure. Data were collected from 397 adult epilepsy patients. Patients were administered the Quality of Life in Epilepsy Inventory-31 (QOLIE-31), Korean Wechsler Intelligence Scale (KWIS), the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General (FACT-G), state scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), and the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D). We assessed internal consistency and test-retest reliabilities and construct validity. RESULTS: Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.69 to 0.86, and test-retest reliability was between 0.50 and 0.71, demonstrating that the items of OOLIE-31 are internally consistent and temporally stable. Pearson's correlations among the QOLIE-31 and emotional well-being, state anxiety, and depressive symptoms were high. Most QOLIE-31 sub-scales discriminated well between patients according to seizure frequency, number of antiepileptic drugs, employment, economic status and depressive symptoms. CONCLUSION: The Korean version of the QOLIE-31 was reliable, and showed construct validity comparable with the original U.S version. Results confirmed that the QOLIE-31 can be applied as one of the specific measures of quality of life in Korean epilepsy patients.
Adult ; Anticonvulsants ; Anxiety ; Depression ; Employment ; Epilepsy* ; Humans ; Intelligence ; Psychometrics ; Quality of Life ; Reproducibility of Results* ; Seizures

This study elucidates the anti-cancer potential of gallic acid (GA) as a promising therapeutic agent that exerts its effect by regulating the PI3K/Akt pathway. To prove our research rationale, we used diverse experimental methods such as cell viability assay, colony formation assay, tumor spheroid formation assay, cell cycle analysis, TUNEL assay, Western blot analysis, xenograft mouse model and histological analysis. Treatment with GA inhibited cell proliferation in dose-dependent manner as measured by cell viability assay at 48 h. GA and cisplatin (CDDP) also inhibited colony formation and tumor spheroid formation. In addition, GA and CDDP induced apoptosis, as determined by the distribution of early and late apoptotic cells and DNA fragmentation. Western blot analysis revealed that inhibition of the PI3K/Akt pathway induced upregulation of p53 (tumor suppressor protein), which in turn regulated cell cycle related proteins such as p21, p27, Cyclin D1 and E1, and intrinsic apoptotic proteins such as Bax, Bcl-2 and cleaved caspase-3. The anti-cancer effect of GA was further confirmed in an in vivo mouse model. Intraperitoneal injection with GA for 4 weeks in an A549-derived tumor xenograft model reduced the size of tumor mass. Injection of them downregulated the expression of proliferating cell nuclear antigen and p-Akt, but upregulated the expression of cleaved caspase-3 in tumor tissues. Taken together, these results indicated that GA hindered lung cancer progression by inducing cell cycle arrest and apoptosis, suggesting that GA would be a potential therapeutic agent against non-small cell lung cancer.

Several compounds and extracts isolated from a brown alga, Ishige (I.) okamurae, exhibit anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. The present study investigated whether the ethyl acetate (EtOAc) fraction of I. okamurae (EFIO) could ameliorate carbon tetrachloride (CCl4)-induced hepatotoxicity in rats. Sprague-Dawley rats were intraperitoneally (i.p.) administered with EFIO at 10 or 50 mg/kg per day for 2 consecutive days before CCl4 injection (3.3 mL/kg, i.p.). Twenty four hours later, the rats were anesthesized with diethyl ether and dissected. Pretreatment with EFIO significantly reduced the increased serum levels of alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase in CCl4-treated rats. Pretreatment with EFIO also significantly inhibited the reduced activities of superoxide dismutase and catalase in the CCl4-injured liver. Histopathological evaluations showed that hemorrhage, hepatocyte necrosis, inflammatory cell infiltration, and fatty degeneration induced by CCl4 treatment were ameliorated by the administration of EFIO. Additionally, liver immunohistochemical analyses revealed the marked reduction in ED1-positive monocyte-like macrophages in EFIO-pretreated rats given CCl4. These results suggest that EFIO ameliorates CCl4-induced liver injury, possibly through the inhibition of oxidative stress.
Acetates ; Alanine Transaminase ; Animals ; Aspartate Aminotransferases ; Carbon ; Carbon Tetrachloride ; Catalase ; Ether, Ethyl ; Hemorrhage ; Hepatocytes ; Liver ; Macrophages ; Necrosis ; Oxidative Stress ; Rats ; Rats, Sprague-Dawley ; Superoxide Dismutase

This paper describes a community effort to improve earlier versions of the full-text corpus of Genomics & Informatics by semi-automatically detecting and correcting PDF-to-text conversion errors and optical character recognition errors during the first hackathon of Genomics & Informatics Annotation Hackathon (GIAH) event. Extracting text from multi-column biomedical documents such as Genomics & Informatics is known to be notoriously difficult. The hackathon was piloted as part of a coding competition of the ELTEC College of Engineering at Ewha Womans University in order to enable researchers and students to create or annotate their own versions of the Genomics & Informatics corpus, to gain and create knowledge about corpus linguistics, and simultaneously to acquire tangible and transferable skills. The proposed projects during the hackathon harness an internal database containing different versions of the corpus and annotations.

This paper describes a community effort to improve earlier versions of the full-text corpus of Genomics & Informatics by semi-automatically detecting and correcting PDF-to-text conversion errors and optical character recognition errors during the first hackathon of Genomics & Informatics Annotation Hackathon (GIAH) event. Extracting text from multi-column biomedical documents such as Genomics & Informatics is known to be notoriously difficult. The hackathon was piloted as part of a coding competition of the ELTEC College of Engineering at Ewha Womans University in order to enable researchers and students to create or annotate their own versions of the Genomics & Informatics corpus, to gain and create knowledge about corpus linguistics, and simultaneously to acquire tangible and transferable skills. The proposed projects during the hackathon harness an internal database containing different versions of the corpus and annotations.