Performance Evaluation of the ichroma SMART Analyzer in Measuring C-reactive Protein and Procalcitonin Levels

Background: For monitoring infection and inflammation episodes, biomarkers of host response, such as C-reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT), are now being recognized as useful tools in the diagnostic process. We aimed at evaluating the analytical performance of the recently developed semi-automated ichroma SMART system (Boditech Med Inc., Korea), which allows measurements of both CRP and PCT. Methods: We evaluated the analytical performance of the ichroma SMART system and the agreement between its results and the laboratory standards for CRP and PCT measurements. The precision and linearity as well as the method of measurement were compared to the DxC 800 (Beckman Coulter, USA) for CRP and to the VIDAS (bioMerieux SA, France) for PCT, according to corresponding CLSI guidelines. Additionally, we evaluated the carryover rates between specimens. Results: The total precision (% CV) of the ichroma SMART system in measuring low, middle, and high level controls (level 1, 2, 3) was 6.32%, 5.75%, and 3.56% for CRP, and 8.07%, 6.24%, and 6.53% for PCT. In the linearity test, R2 was 0.9997 and 0.9982 for CRP (0.1-336.8 mg/L) and PCT (0.05-60.91 ng/mL), respectively. Good correlation was observed between ichroma SMART and DxC 800 for CRP (r=0.997), and between ichroma SMART and VIDAS for PCT (r=0.992). Carry-over effect was 0.02% for CRP and 0.04% for PCT. Conclusions: The ichroma SMART system showed an adequate performance and appeared to be a suitable clinical analyzer with a simple operating procedure for the measurement of CRP and PCT.ope

The risk factors associated with treatment-related mortality in 16,073 kidney transplantation-A nationwide cohort study

Mortality at an early stage after kidney transplantation is a catastrophic event. Treatment-related mortality (TRM) within 1 or 3 months after kidney transplantation has been seldom reported. We designed a retrospective observational cohort study using a national population-based database, which included information about all kidney recipients between 2003 and 2016. A total of 16,073 patients who underwent kidney transplantation were included. The mortality rates 1 month (early TRM) and 3 months (TRM) after transplantation were 0.5% (n = 74) and 1.0% (n = 160), respectively. Based on a multivariate analysis, older age (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.06;P< 0.001), coronary artery disease (HR = 3.02;P= 0.002), and hemodialysis compared with pre-emptive kidney transplantation (HR = 2.53;P =0.046) were the risk factors for early TRM. Older age (HR = 1.07;P< 0.001), coronary artery disease (HR = 2.88;P< 0.001), and hemodialysis (HR = 2.35;P= 0.004) were the common independent risk factors for TRM. In contrast, cardiac arrhythmia (HR = 1.98;P= 0.027) was associated only with early TRM, and fungal infection (HR = 2.61;P< 0.001), and epoch of transplantation (HR = 0.34;P <0.001) were the factors associated with only TRM. The identified risk factors should be considered in patient counselling, selection, and management to prevent TRM.ope

Recommendations for Clinical Application of Pharmacogenetic Test Results Interpretation by Clinical Laboratories

As various clinical genetic tests become widely available, the quality of clinical practice in several medical fields, including clinical pharmacogenetics, can be dramatically improved based on genetic test results. Importantly, standardization and the appropriate result interpretation of pharmacogenetic tests are crucial steps toward successful clinical implementation. Among various guidelines published to support accurate clinical decisions, the most commonly utilized evidence is systematically organized in the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium guidelines, which are regularly updated. The establishment of accurate evidence for each drug-gene pair in pharmacogenetic test result interpretation is essential, but is a complicated and challenging issue. Herein, we provide up-to-date evidence for preparing professional interpretative comments in clinical pharmacogenetic test reports. We provide therapeutic recommendations based on pharmacological genotype-phenotype annotations for a total of 32 drug-gene pairs with sufficient clinical evidence. This document aims to provide reliable evidence and practical information for pharmacogenetic variant interpretation in routine clinical settings, to maximize the efficacy and minimize the side-effects of various pharmacotherapies.ope

Clinical and Molecular Delineation of a Novel De Novo 4q28.3-31.21 Interstitial Deletion in a Patient with Developmental Delay

ope

Incidence of malignancy and related mortality after kidney transplantation: a nationwide, population-based cohort study in Korea

Post-transplant malignancy (PTM) is a leading cause of premature mortality among kidney transplantation recipients. However, population-based cohort studies that cover incidence, mortality, and risk factors for PTM are rarely reported, especially in East Asia. We designed a retrospective cohort study using a national population-based database. A total of 9915 kidney recipients between 2003 and 2016 were included. During this period, 598 cases (6.0%) of de novo PTM occurred. The most common PTM was thyroid cancer (14.2%), followed by colorectal (11.2%), kidney (10.7%), and stomach cancers (8.9%). The standardised incidence ratio for all-site cancer was 3.9. The risks of Kaposi sarcoma (192.9) and kidney cancer (21.1) were more than 10 times those of the general population. Cancer-related deaths were 89 (14.9%) with liver cancer being the highest (14.6%), followed by lung cancer (13.5%), non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) (12.4%), stomach cancer (9.0%), and colorectal cancer (7.9%). The standardised mortality ratio (SMR) was slightly elevated (1.4). A notable increase in SMR was observed for lymphoma (9.3 for Hodgkin lymphoma and 5.5 for NHL). Older age and graft failure were significantly related to PTM. These findings reflecting geographical variation have implications for the development of strategies for fatal cancers to prevent premature deaths from PTM.ope

3D object recognition using scale-invariant features

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 공과대학 기계항공공학부, 2017. 8. 이건우.As 3D scanning technology has developed, it has become easier to acquire various 3D surface datathus, there is a growing need for 3D data registration and recognition technology. In particular, techniques for finding the exact positions of 3D objects in a cluttered scene in which many parts of an object are occluded and multiple objects may be present is an important technology required by various fields such as industrial inspections, medical imaging, and games. Many existing studies have used local descriptors with local surface patches, and most of these use a fixed support radius so they cannot cope perfectly when the model and scene are at different scales. In this paper, we propose a new object recognition algorithm that exceeds the performance of existing studies. The process of 3D object recognition in a cluttered scene is largely composed of three steps: feature selection, feature description, and matching. In this study, we propose a perfectly scale-invariant feature selection algorithm by extending the 2D SIFT algorithm to a 3D mesh. The feature selection method proposed in this study can obtain highly repeatable feature points and support radii regardless of the scale. The selected features can effectively describe local information using the new shape descriptor proposed in this study. Unlike existing shape descriptors, it is possible to perform scale-invariant 3D object recognition and achieve a high recognition rate when combined with the feature point selection algorithm proposed in this study using the gradients of the scalar functions as defined on the 3D surface. We also reduced the searching space and lowered the false positive rate by suggesting a new RANSAC-based transformation hypothesis generation algorithm. Our 3D object recognition algorithm achieves recognition rates of 99.5% and 97.8% when tested on U3OR and CFVD datasets, respectively, which exceeds the results of previous studies.CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Background 1 CHAPTER 2. RELATED WORKS 5 2.1 Feature selection 5 2.1.1 Fixed-scale methods 5 2.1.2 Adaptive-scale methods 6 2.2 Feature description 8 2.2.1 Signature-based methods 8 2.2.2 Histogram-based method 9 2.3 Surface matching 12 CHAPTER 3. Datasets 14 3.1 U3OR dataset 14 3.2 CFVD dataset 16 CHAPTER 4. FEATURE SELECTION 18 4.1 Concepts 18 4.2 Gaussian and DoG pyramid 21 4.3 Local Extrema Detection 24 CHAPTER 5. Feature description 28 5.1 LRF construction 28 5.2 Feature orientation assignment 32 5.3 Feature vector generation 35 CHAPTER 6. 3D object recognition 38 6.1 Offline processing 38 6.2 Matching 39 6.3 Transformation hypotheses generation 41 6.4 Verification and segmentation 44 CHAPTER 7. Experiments 51 7.1 Results on the U3OR dataset 51 7.2 Results on the CFVD dataset 64 CHAPTER 8. Conclusion 70 REFERENCES 72 ABSTRACT (Korean) 80Docto

Transfusion demand in COVID-19 patients from the Korean population: a nationwide study in South Korea

[No abstract available]ope

External Quality Assessment of Serum Protein and Immunofixation Electrophoresis in Korea

In Korea, many laboratories rely on inter-laboratory proficiency testing for external quality control of serum protein electrophoresis (SPEP) and immunofixation electrophoresis (IFE). Therefore, we conducted an external quality assessment in 12 clinical laboratories. Five test samples were prepared by pooling residual samples together in our laboratory according to the SPEP pattern or the existence of monoclonal proteins, and then aliquoting them. Each clinical laboratory carried out SPEP and IFE tests, quantified each fraction and monoclonal protein (if present), and produced the interpretation reports according to the method of each laboratory. Monoclonal protein was detected in two of the five test samples, and the detection of monoclonal proteins and the isotyping results were consistent in all participating institutions. There were no significant variations in the quantities of albumin, alpha-1, and -2 globulin fractions, and the whole beta-gamma region. However, the values of beta-1, -2, and gamma globulin fractions differed significantly, and there was a large variation in the reported monoclonal protein concentrations. The quantitative values obtained using the tangent skimming method were much lower than those obtained using the other methods. In this study, the interpretation reports were generally consistent, but the quantitative values were different between the participating laboratories. This is the first study to approach the external quality assessment of SPEP and IFE in Korea. Further studies are required to establish external quality control management for these tests.ope

Dynamic Chronological Changes in Serum Triglycerides Are Associated With the Time Point for Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Development in the Nationwide Korean Population Cohort

Background: We investigated the effects of anthropometric, laboratory, and lifestyle factors on the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in a nationwide, population-based, 4-year retrospective cohort. Methods: The propensity score-matched study and control groups contained 1,474 subjects who had data in the Korean National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort in 2009, 2011, and 2013. NAFLD was defined using medical records of a diagnosis confirmed by primary clinicians and meeting two previously validated fatty liver prediction models. Chronological changes in anthropometric variables, laboratory results, and lifestyle factors during two periods were compared between patient and control groups in order to find out parameters with consistent dynamics in pre-NAFLD stage which was defined as period just before the NAFLD development. Results: Among the 5 anthropometric, 10 laboratory, and 3 lifestyle factors, prominent chronological decremental changes in serum triglycerides were consistently observed during the pre-NAFLD stage, although the degrees of changes were more predominant in men (-9.46 mg/dL) than women (-5.98 mg/dL). Furthermore, weight and waist circumference changes during the pre-NAFLD stage were noticeable only in women (+0.36 kg and +0.9 cm for weight and waist circumference, respectively), which suggest gender difference in NAFLD. Conclusion: Early screening strategies for people with abrupt chronological changes in serum triglycerides to predict NAFLD development before the progression is recommended.ope

Fecal Occult Blood Test Results of the National Colorectal Cancer Screening Program in South Korea (2006-2013)

There has been controversy regarding the clinical utility of fecal occult blood test (FOBT) as a screening tool for colorectal cancer (CRC) in the general population. The purpose of this study was to examine the results of Korea national CRC screening using FOBT from 2006 to 2013 and to evaluate the implementation of the program. We analyzed the results of FOBT, colonoscopy, and the side effects during colonoscopy for the subjects (n = 20,609,909) from the Korea National Health Insurance Cancer Screening database. For evaluation of Korea national CRC screening program implementation over the 8-year period, we calculated uptake rate, FOBT positivity rate, and subsequent test compliance rate. The overall uptake rate was 30.1%, with an increasing pattern from 2006 to 2011. A relatively higher FOBT positivity rate (6.4%) and lower subsequent test compliance rate (46.6%) were observed in comparison to the results previously reported in Western countries. Side effects reported within 3 months period after colonoscopy accounted for 0.17% of all procedures, with bleeding being the most prevalent type. Although the implementation of CRC screening program using FOBT in Korea seems successful, trends in key indicators for Korea national CRC screening program should be monitored continuously.ope