No abstract available.
C-Reactive Protein* ; Female ; Obstetric Labor, Premature* ; Pregnancy ; Tocolysis*

No abstract available.
Cervix Uteri* ; Chlamydia trachomatis* ; Chlamydia* ; Female

This study was performed in order to evaluate the sero-epidemiological status of toxoplasmosis in pregnant Korean women. Among 5, 175 sera and 750 amniotic fluid samples obtained from pregnant women, 41 serum samples (0.79%) and 10 (1.33%) amniotic fluid samples tested positive for IgG antibodies by ELISA. Fifty one cases showing a score more than 0.25 on ELISA were tested for PCR reaction against the SAG1 gene. Only one case of the 51 ELISA positive cases exhibited a positive reaction on all tests. This case had a history of acute nephropyelitis during early pregnancy, but fortunately, had delivered a phenotypically healthy baby. In this study, the seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis in pregnant women was found to be comparatively low, consistent with previous reports from Korea. However our trials, performed with a variety of diagnostic tools, were considered to be useful for the precise diagnosis of congenital toxoplasmosis.
Adult ; Animals ; Antibodies, Protozoan/*blood ; Female ; Humans ; Korea/epidemiology ; Pregnancy ; Pregnancy Complications/diet therapy/*epidemiology ; Seroepidemiologic Studies ; Toxoplasma/*immunology ; Toxoplasmosis/*epidemiology

Local anesthesia for arthroscopic procedure of the knee is an increasinglv popular technique that avoids the use of general anesthesia and the associated risks of respiratory depression, aspiration, and postoperative sedation. Many authors, for example McGinty etc., Martin, Yoshiya etc., advocated local anesthesia as safe and efficient method for arthroscopic procedures of the knee. We performed arthoroscopy of the knee under local anesthesia on 150 patients for diagnostic and operative purposes between January l993 and December l996. The technique of local anesthesia that we used was that 20cc of 0.5%; bupivacaine with I:200,000 epinephrine was injected into superolateral portal of the knee joint and additional 10-20cc ot 1% lidocaine into the arthroscopic portals. Pnevmatic tourniquet wa, not applied in all cases. We analysed the 150 cases and the results were as follows; The diagnostic arthroscopy was performed in 50 cases and the operative arthroscopy was in 100 cases. The duration ot local anethesia was from 4 hours to 12 hours, with an average of 6 hours. In 35 cases arthroscopy was performed as outpatient procedure and average hospital stay excluding other problem was 5 days. No complication related to systemic toxicity by local anesthetics was observed. Conclusively arthroscopy of the knee under local anesthesia is safe and effective procedure to avoid the risks of general anesthesia but patients selection is very important.
Anesthesia, General ; Anesthesia, Local* ; Anesthetics, Local ; Arthroscopy* ; Bupivacaine ; Epinephrine ; Humans ; Knee Joint ; Knee* ; Length of Stay ; Lidocaine ; Outpatients ; Respiratory Insufficiency ; Tourniquets

No abstract available.
Pregnancy* ; Spermatozoa*

The estimation of age is an important issue in forensic science, and the forensic community has attempted many times to establish methods for solving this issue. Aging leads to alterations in tissues and organs at the molecular level. These alterations at the molecular level may aid forensic scientists to estimate the age of a living person or a dead body. Initially, the focus was on the genetic components of aging, but recently, epigenetic mechanisms have emerged as the key contributors to the alterations in genome structure and function that accompany aging. In particular, DNA methylation is one of the best-understood mechanisms, and it has been suggested as a promising biomarker for age estimation in many studies. In this review, we summarize the recent studies on age-associated DNA methylation changes in different tissues and discuss its possible and practical applications in forensics.
Aging ; DNA ; DNA Methylation ; Epigenomics ; Forensic Sciences ; Genome ; Humans

Kinship testing in forensic casework is largely based on a likelihood ratio (LR) approach with short tandem repeat (STR) markers; however, in order to efficiently identify potential relatives in a specific population, the threshold values for kinship prediction should be determined by analyzing the kinship index distributions of the population in question. In this study, 250,000 DNA profiles were simulated using allele frequencies at 20 autosomal STR loci in Koreans, then the LRs were calculated for true close relatives and unrelated pairs. The LR distributions in related and unrelated pairs under a given relationship were compared in 2 sets of 13 Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) and 20 STR profiles. Using 13 CODIS STRs, true relatives in parent/child and full-sibling relationships were sufficiently discriminated from unrelated pairs with LR thresholds of 1,000 and 100, respectively. However, the CODIS STRs lacked the discriminatory power to differentiate between related and unrelated pairs in uncle/nephew and first cousin relationships due to high false-positive and false-negative rates with a LR threshold of 10. Increasing the number of STR loci to 20 increased discrimination of close relatives, but high false results remained in uncle/nephew and first cousin relationships. The kinship index data from this study will help make decisions on various kinship testing and familial searching in Koreans.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; DNA ; Gene Frequency ; Humans ; Microsatellite Repeats

PURPOSE: This study was conducted to investigate the effects of a school based smoking prevention program for college freshmen. METHOD: The nonequivalent control group, pretest-post-test design was used. Among 16 departments in a University located in S city, students in 8, randomly selected, departments received 6 sessions of smoking prevention program consisted of small group discussion led by smoking cessation leaders, video watching, and lectures from March 15 to June 9, 2004. Students in remaining 8 departments did not receive any education. Student's attitude, intention, stress, temptation, knowledge and self efficacy was measured. RESULT: The level of stress and smoking temptation was significantly decreased in the experimental group over that of the control group. CONCLUSION: It was proven that this school based smoking prevention program was effective for decreasing smoking temptation in college freshmen. In the future, more efforts should be given to college age students to prevent them becoming chronic smokers.
Education ; Humans ; Intention ; Lectures ; Self Efficacy ; Smoke* ; Smoking Cessation ; Smoking*

Recently, next generation sequencing (NGS) has received attention as the ultimate genotyping method to overcome the limitations of capillary electrophoresis (CE)-based short tandem repeat (STR) analysis, such as the limited number of STR loci that can be measured simultaneously using fluorescent-labeled primers and the maximum size of STR amplicons. In this study, we analyzed 15 autosomal STR markers via the NGS method and evaluated their effectiveness in STR analysis. Using male and female standard DNA as single-sources and their 1:1 mixture, we sequentially generated sample amplicons by the multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, constructed DNA libraries by ligation of adapters with a multiplex identifier (MID), and sequenced DNA using the Roche GS Junior Platform. Sequencing data for each sample were analyzed via alignment with pre-built reference sequences. Most STR alleles could be determined by applying a coverage threshold of 20% for the two single-sources and 10% for the 1:1 mixture. The structure of the STR in each allele was accurately determined by examining the sequences of the target STR region. The mixture ratio of the mixed sample was estimated by analyzing the coverage ratios between assigned alleles at each locus and the reference/variant ratios from the observed sequence variations. In conclusion, the experimental method used in this study allowed the successful generation of NGS data. In addition, the NGS data analysis protocol enables accurate STR allele call and repeat structure determination at each locus. Therefore, this approach using the NGS system will be helpful to interpret and analysis the STR profiles from singe-source and even mixed samples in forensic investigation.
Alleles ; DNA ; Electrophoresis, Capillary ; Female ; Gene Library ; Humans ; Ligation ; Male ; Microsatellite Repeats ; Multiplex Polymerase Chain Reaction ; Statistics as Topic

No abstract available.