PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to provide basic data to develop safety education programs in elementary school. METHOD: Analysis is made based on textbooks for 1st-6th-grade elementary school students published by Korea Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development. RESULTS: 1) Among the textbooks. only , , , and courses dealt with safety education. 2) The contents of safety education included traffic safety, water safety, indoor and outdoor safety, fire, emergency measures, misuse and abuse of drug, smoking, toy safety, sports safety, leasure safety and disasters. However, the contents were theoretical, fragmentary, local and limited. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that the consents of safety education must be strengthened, and more practical and more behavior-oriented in consideration of activities.
Disasters ; Education* ; Emergencies ; Fires ; Humans ; Korea ; Play and Playthings ; Smoke ; Smoking ; Sports ; Staff Development

The purpose of this study was to predict osteoporosis risk as decreasing muscle mass and to declare the cut-off value of low muscle mass in an elderly Korean population. This study was based on data from the 2008-2010 Korea National Health and Nutritional Examination Surveys (KNHANES). The subjects included 1,308 men and 1,171 women over 65 yr. Bone mineral density (BMD) and appendicular skeletal muscle (ASM) were measured by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), and appendicular skeletal muscle was adjusted by height as a marker of sarcopenia. After confirming the correlation between low muscle mass and BMD, the best cut-off value of muscle mass to estimate osteoporosis was suggested through the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. For both men and women, BMD correlated positively with low muscle mass when ASM/Ht2 was used as a marker for sarcopenia. The ROC curve showed that ASM/Ht2 was the best marker for osteoporosis at a cut-off value of 6.85 kg/m2 for men and 5.96 kg/m2 for women. When these cut-off values were used to determine sarcopenia, the risk of osteoporosis increased 4.14 times in men and 1.88 times in women. In particular, men (OR 2.12) with sarcopenia were more greatly affected than women (OR 1.15), even after adjusting for osteoporosis risk factors. In elderly Korean people, sarcopenia is positively correlated with BMD and there is a strong correlation between sarcopenia and osteoporosis with risk of bone fracture.
Absorptiometry, Photon ; Aged ; Aged, 80 and over ; Area Under Curve ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Body Mass Index ; Bone Density ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Muscle, Skeletal/*pathology/radiography ; Nutrition Surveys ; Odds Ratio ; Osteoporosis/*diagnosis/etiology ; ROC Curve ; Republic of Korea ; Risk Factors ; Sarcopenia/physiopathology

OBJECTIVE: Understanding the neural functional organization of swallowing in the elderly is essential when diagnosing and treating older adults with swallowing difficulties. While brain-imaging studies in young adults have implicated multiple cortical regions in swallowing, only a few investigations were performed on older subjects. In this study, we aimed to compare neural activation in regions for swallowing between healthy young and older adults and to better understand neural control of deglutition, complex sensory-motor process which occurs as a result of old age. METHOD: Fifteen young and fifteen older healthy individuals without a swallowing problem were examined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during voluntary saliva swallowing. Functional image data was obtained with a T2 gradient-echo, echo planar imaging (EPI) pulse sequence optimized for blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) contrast. Two samples t-test was conducted to perform group comparison (younger adults versus older adults) for the areas in which the activation was larger for the swallowing condition than the non-swallow condition. RESULT: Both groups showed activations in areas involved in the motor control and execution. In both groups, main regions of activation included bilateral prefrontal cortex, primary somatosensory cortex, insula, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. Between-group comparisons revealed statistically stronger activations in the prefrontal cortex and middle temporal gyrus of older adults during swallowing. CONCLUSION: This study provides evidence that swallowing requires larger and more widespread areas of neural control in older adults group, especially in prefrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus. These findings suggest that more demanding swallowing tasks are necessary for elderly patients because of their inefficient neural network due to their age.
Adult ; Aged ; Basal Ganglia ; Cerebellum ; Deglutition* ; Echo-Planar Imaging ; Humans ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging* ; Methods ; Prefrontal Cortex ; Saliva ; Somatosensory Cortex ; Temporal Lobe ; Young Adult

Background: Hearing loss (HL) is the most common chronic disease and has been linked to negative health outcomes. Hearing aids (HAs) are regarded as the gold standard for HL management, however, the adoption rate of HAs is relatively low for various reasons. With this background, hearing devices, such as personal sound amplification products (PSAPs) received significant attention as an alternative to conventional HAs. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical efficacy of PSAPs in patients with mild to moderately severe HL. Methods: Nineteen patients with mild hearing loss (MHL), 23 with moderate hearing loss (MDHL), and 15 with moderately severe hearing loss (MSHL) participated in the study.Electroacoustic analysis, simulated real-ear measurements (REMs), and three clinical evaluations were implemented. Results: All devices satisfied the electroacoustic tolerances. All devices provided sufficient gain for MHL and MDHL audiograms. However, in MSHL audiogram, the gains of PSAPs were insufficient, especially for high frequencies. In terms of clinical evaluations, soundfield audiometry showed significant improvements between aided and unaided thresholds in all groups for all devices (P < 0.001). Significant improvements of word recognition scores were only shown for HAs between aided and unaided conditions. The Korean version of the Hearing In Noise Test did not show any consistent findings for all devices and groups. Conclusion Certain PSAPs are beneficial for improving hearing and speech perception in patients with HL. Well-chosen PSAPs could be an alternative hearing rehabilitation option for these patients.

OBJECTIVES: To compare the clinical effectiveness of the virtual reality (VR) programs in assessing psychosocial problems, improving symptoms, and reducing suicide risk in depressive patients with those of pharmacotherapy. METHODS: Thirty-six patients were recruited with depression in the treatment group and 22 participants in the healthy control group through internet advertisements between November 2018 and March 2019. Participants in the treatment group were allocated randomly at a 1:1 ratio to either the VR group or pharmacotherapy group. At the baseline, all participants were assessed with a comprehensive battery for their psychological characteristics by structured scales using VR technologies. Assessments of patients in the treatment group were repeated four weeks after therapeutic intervention. The primary outcome measures were the Korean Version of Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology-Self-Report and suicidality scales of the Korean Mini International Neuropsychiatric interview. The borderline personality (Personality Assessment Inventory-Borderline Features Scale) and resilience (Korean Resilience Questionnaire) were also evaluated. RESULTS: Twenty-four depressive patients completed the treatment, and the final assessment was conducted after four weeks of treatment. In the initial assessment, the patient group showed significantly higher depressive symptoms, suicidality, borderline personality trait, and lower resilience than healthy control group. After the four-week therapeutic interventions, the VR group showed significant improvement in depression, suicidality, borderline personality trait, and resilience. In addition, there was no significant difference in the treatment efficacy between the VR group and the pharmacotherapy group. CONCLUSION In this study, the VR treatment program has clear benefits for emotional distress and reducing suicidality in depressive patients. Evidence-based VR treatments may show new clinical potential for depressive disorder.

BACKGROUND: Women with one abnormal value (OAV) in a 100 g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) during pregnancy are reported to have an increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes. However, there is limited data about whether women with OAV will progress to gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) when the OGTT is repeated. METHODS: To identify clinical and metabolic predictors for GDM in women with OAV, we conducted a retrospective study and identified women with OAV in the OGTT done at 24 to 30 weeks gestational age (GA) and repeated the second OGTT between 32 and 34 weeks of GA. RESULTS: Among 137 women with OAV in the initial OGTT, 58 (42.3%) had normal, 40 (29.2%) had OAV and 39 (28.5%) had GDM in the second OGTT. Maternal age, prepregnancy body mass index, weight gain from prepregnancy to the second OGTT, GA at the time of the OGTT, and parity were similar among normal, OAV, and GDM groups. Plasma glucose levels in screening tests were different (151.8±15.7, 155.8±14.6, 162.5±20.3 mg/dL, P<0.05), but fasting, 1-, 2-, and 3-hour glucose levels in the initial OGTT were not. Compared to women with screen negative, women with untreated OAV had a higher frequency of macrosomia. CONCLUSION: We demonstrated that women with OAV in the initial OGTT significantly progressed to GDM in the second OGTT. Clinical parameters predicting progression to GDM were not found. Repeating the OGTT in women with OAV in the initial test may be helpful to detect GDM progression.
Blood Glucose ; Body Mass Index ; Diabetes, Gestational ; Fasting ; Female ; Gestational Age ; Glucose ; Glucose Tolerance Test ; Humans ; Mass Screening ; Maternal Age ; Parity ; Pregnancy ; Pregnancy Outcome ; Pregnant Women ; Retrospective Studies ; Weight Gain

This phase 1 clinical trial tested the safety of intramuscular gene transfer by using naked plasmid DNA encoding the gene for VEGF, and analyzed the potential therapeutic benefits in patients with severe peripheral arterial disease (PAD). This study was an open-labeled, dose- escalating, single-center trial on nine male patients with severe debilitating PAD who had not responded to conventional therapy. Seven had Buerger's disease and two had arteriosclerosis obliterans. Plasmid DNA (pCK) containing human VEGF165 was given by eight intramuscular injections in and around the area in need of new blood vessels. The study evaluated three escalating total doses (2, 4, and 8 mg of pCK- VEGF165), with half of each total dose given four weeks apart. The follow-up duration was nine months. The gene injections were well tolerated without significant side effects or laboratory abnormalities related to gene transfer. Three patients showed transient edema in their extremities. Ischemic pain of the affected limb was relieved or improved markedly in six of seven patients. Ischemic ulcers healed or improved in four of six patients. The mean ankle-brachial index (ABI) improved significantly. Six of nine patients showed an increase in collateral vessels around the injection sites demonstrated by digital subtraction angiography. However, there was no relationship between the degree of ABI improvement and the dose given. Mean plasma levels of VEGF did not increase significantly. In conclusion, intramuscular injections of pCK- VEGF165 can be performed safely to induce therapeutic angiogenesis in patients with severe PAD.
Adult ; Aged ; Angiography, Digital Subtraction ; Arterial Occlusive Diseases/*therapy ; Foot/pathology ; *Gene Therapy ; Gene Transfer Techniques ; Humans ; Injections, Intramuscular ; Male ; Middle Aged ; *Neovascularization, Physiologic ; Peripheral Vascular Diseases/*therapy ; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't ; Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A/*genetics

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is characterized by formation of multiple fluid-filled cysts that expand over time and destroy renal architecture. The proteins encoded by the PKD1 and PKD2 genes, mutations in which account for nearly all cases of ADPKD, may help guard against cystogenesis. Previously developed mouse models of PKD1 and PKD2 demonstrated an embryonic lethal phenotype and massive cyst formation in the kidney, indicating that PKD1 and PKD2 probably play important roles during normal renal tubular development. However, their precise role in development and the cellular mechanisms of cyst formation induced by PKD1 and PKD2 mutations are not fully understood. To address this question, we presently created Pkd2 knockout and PKD2 transgenic mouse embryo fibroblasts. We used a mouse oligonucleotide microarray to identify messenger RNAs whose expression was altered by the overexpression of the PKD2 or knockout of the Pkd2. The majority of identified mutations was involved in critical biological processes, such as metabolism, transcription, cell adhesion, cell cycle, and signal transduction. Herein, we confirmed differential expressions of several genes including aquaporin-1, according to different PKD2 expression levels in ADPKD mouse models, through microarray analysis. These data may be helpful in PKD2-related mechanisms of ADPKD pathogenesis.
Animals ; Biological Processes ; Cell Adhesion ; Cell Cycle ; Embryonic Structures ; Fibroblasts ; Kidney ; Mice ; Mice, Transgenic ; Microarray Analysis ; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis ; Phenotype ; Polycystic Kidney Diseases ; Polycystic Kidney, Autosomal Dominant ; Proteins ; RNA, Messenger ; Signal Transduction

BACKGROUND: We aimed to identify the postpartum metabolic factors that were associated with the development of diabetes in women with a history of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). In addition, we examined the role of the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) in the prediction of future diabetes. METHODS: We conducted a prospective study of 179 subjects who previously had GDM but did not have diabetes at 2 months postpartum. The initial postpartum examination including a 75-g OGTT and the frequently sampled intravenous glucose tolerance test (FSIVGTT) was performed 12 months after delivery, and annual follow-up visits were made thereafter. RESULTS: The insulinogenic index (IGI30) obtained from the OGTT was significantly correlated with the acute insulin response to glucose (AIRg) obtained from the FSIVGTT. The disposition indices obtained from the OGTT and FSIVGTT were also significantly correlated. Women who progressed to diabetes had a lower insulin secretory capacity including IGI30, AIRg, and disposition indices obtained from the FSIVGTT and OGTT compared with those who did not. However, the insulin sensitivity indices obtained from the OGTT and FSIVGTT did not differ between the two groups. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the 2-hour glucose and disposition index obtained from the FSIVGTT were significant postpartum metabolic risk factors for the development of diabetes. CONCLUSION: We identified a crucial role of β-cell dysfunction in the development of diabetes in Korean women with previous GDM. The 2-hour glucose result from the OGTT is an independent predictor of future diabetes. Therefore, the OGTT is crucial for better prediction of future diabetes in Korean women with previous GDM.
Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 ; Diabetes, Gestational ; Female ; Follow-Up Studies ; Glucose ; Glucose Tolerance Test ; Humans ; Insulin ; Insulin Resistance ; Logistic Models ; Postpartum Period ; Pregnancy ; Prospective Studies ; Risk Factors