Epidemiology and Investigation of Foot‐and‐Mouth Disease (FMD) in the Republic of Korea

This chapter describes about the experience of dealing with FMD outbreaks in the Republic of Korea. We explain what is FMD, the concept of epidemiological investigation on outbreak sites of FMD, including the episode of detecting the index case for seven epidemics occurred since 2000, and information obtained from investigation in Korea. In any case, farmers’ attitude (recognize clinical signs and report suspected cases) played the essential role in determining size and duration of epidemics. A rapid and correct diagnosis including clinical examination and laboratory test for confirmation is also important

Spring migration of mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) tracked with wild-trackers in East Asia

Mallard is a dominant waterfowl species wintered in Korea. We researched the mallard spring migration route, stopover sites, and breeding sites. We used cannon nets in Central Korea to catch and attach 10 wild trackers (WT-200). The mallards’ spring departure dates were from the end of March to early April. The spring migration route varied by individual mallards, with most moving through the North Korean east coast. Breeding sites were distributed among the interior of Northeastern China. The average distance to the breeding areas was 1,265 km [standard deviation (SD)=491 km] and the average days spent from wintering site to breeding site was 25.3 days (SD=19.2 days). The mallards used several stopover sites when on the spring migration route (average 3.3±2.1, range 2–9). The time spent at the stopover sites was a minimum of 1 day to a maximum of 16 days. Wintering mallards in Korea showed various individual trends regarding spring migration timing, migration route, stopover sites, and usage days

Effect of Recombinant alpha1-Antitrypsin Fc-Fused (AAT-Fc)Protein on the Inhibition of Inflammatory Cytokine Production and Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetes

Contains fulltext : 118341.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)alpha1-Antitrypsin (AAT) is a member of the serine proteinase inhibitor family that impedes the enzymatic activity of serine proteinases, including human neutrophil elastase, cathepsin G and neutrophil proteinase 3. Here, we expressed recombinant AAT by fusing the intact AAT gene to the constant region of IgG1 to generate soluble recombinant AAT-Fc protein. The recombinant AAT-Fc protein was produced in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells and purified using mini-protein A affinity chromatography. Recombinant AAT-Fc protein was tested for antiinflammatory function and AAT-Fc sufficiently suppressed tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha-induced interleukin (IL)-6 in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and inhibited cytokine-induced TNFalpha by different cytokines in mouse macrophage Raw 264.7 cells. However, AAT-Fc failed to suppress lipopolysaccharide-induced cytokine production in both PBMCs and macrophages. In addition, our data showed that AAT-Fc blocks the development of hyperglycemia in a streptozotocin-induced mouse model of diabetes. Interestingly, we also found that plasma-derived AAT specifically inhibited the enzymatic activity of elastase but that AAT-Fc had no inhibitory effect on elastase activity