The Effects of the Acupuncture Treatment for Smoking Cessation in High School Student Smokers

The use of alternative medicine for smoking cessation have been increasing steadily in recent years. A series of clinical group studies was performed to clarify the effect, outcome and success rate of an acupuncture treatment for smoking cessation. This study was conducted for four weeks using 238 smoking students at 2 high schools. The subjects were separated into two groups: 159 students were treated with acupuncture on the anti-smoking acupoints of the ear, which is known to be effective for cessation of smoking (case group), and 79 students were treated at other sites of the ear (control group). The acupuncture treatment was alternately administered at each side of the ears on a weekly basis for 4 weeks. The smoking cessation success was only 1 case (0.6%) in the case group and none in the control group after 4 weeks. The change in the taste of tobacco and the intensity of the desire to smoke were not significantly different between the case and control groups, but the case group showed a tendency of reduction in the taste of tobacco and the intensity of the desire to smoke. In addition, the reduction in cigarette consumption was not significant, but the tendency of reduction in the study group was significant. It is believed that the site of auricular acupuncture for smoking cessation is not important. However, there was a significant tendency in terms of the reduction in cigarette consumption, the taste of tobacco and the intensity of the desire to smoke in the case group, indicating that auricular acupuncture in smoking cessation has some effect

Effects of soybean isoflavone extract on the plasma lipid profiles and antioxidant enzyme activity in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats

The present study evaluated the effects of various dosages of soybean isoflavone extract on lipid profiles, lipid peroxidation and antioxidant activities in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. The one normal control group was fed an AIN-76-based experimental diet and four diabetic groups were fed the same diet, supplemented with four different levels of soybean isoflavone extract for seven weeks. The daily dosages of pure isoflavone for four diabetic groups were set to be 0 mg (diabetic control), 0.5 mg (ISO-I), 3.0 mg (ISO-II) and 30.0 mg (ISO-III) per kilogram of body weight, respectively. The plasma total cholesterol levels and the TBA-reactive substances contents in the liver and kidney were significantly lowered in ISO-II and ISO-III groups compared to those in the diabetic control group. The levels of plasma HDL-cholesterol, plasma vitamin A and hepatic superoxide dismutase were significantly increased in those two groups compared with the diabetic control group. The present study demonstrated the possibility that the diets supplemented with 3.0 mg and 30.0 mg of soybean isoflavone extract may have beneficial effects on the plasma lipids, tissue lipid peroxidation and partly on antioxidant system in diabetic animals and there were no significant differences between the ISO-II and ISO-III groups. The results suggest that the effective daily dosage level of isoflavone for improving lipid metabolism in diabetic rats may be above 3.0 mg per kilogram body weight

CSF total tau/α-synuclein ratio improved the diagnostic performance for Alzheimers disease as an indicator of tau phosphorylation

Abstract Background Recently, several studies suggested potential involvements of α-synuclein in Alzheimers disease (AD) pathophysiology. Higher concentrations of α-synuclein were reported in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of AD patients with a positive correlation towards CSF tau, indicating its possible role in AD. We analyzed the CSF biomarkers to verify whether α-synuclein could be an additional supported biomarker in AD diagnosis. Methods In this cross-sectional study, CSF samples of 71 early-onset AD, 34 late-onset AD, 11 mild cognitive impairment, 17 subjective cognitive decline, 45 Parkinsons disease, and 32 healthy control (HC) were collected. CSF amyloid-β1-42 (A), total tau (N), and phosphorylated tau181 (T) were measured by commercial ELISA kits, and in-house ELISA kit was developed to quantify α-synuclein. The cognitive assessments and amyloid-PET imaging were also performed. Results CSF α-synuclein manifested a tendency to increase in AD and to decreased in Parkinsons disease compared to HC. The equilibrium states of total tau and α-synuclein concentrations were changed significantly in AD, and the ratio of total tau/α-synuclein (N/αS) was dramatically increased in AD than HC. Remarkably, N/αS revealed a strong positive correlation with tau phosphorylation rate. Also, the combination of N/αS with amyloid-β1-42/phosphorylated tau181ratio had the best diagnosis performance (AUC = 0.956, sensitivity = 96%, specificity = 87%). In concordance analysis, N/αS showed the higher diagnostic agreement with amyloid-β1-42 and amyloid-PET. Analysis of biomarker profiling with N/αS had distinctive characteristics and clustering of each group. Especially, among the group of suspected non-Alzheimers disease pathophysiology, all A−T+N+ patients with N/αS+ were reintegrated into AD. Conclusions The high correlation of α-synuclein with tau and the elevated N/αS in AD supported the involvement of α-synuclein in AD pathophysiology. Importantly, N/αS improved the diagnostic performance, confirming the needs of incorporating α-synuclein as a biomarker for neurodegenerative disorders. The incorporation of a biomarker group [N/αS] could contribute to provide better understanding and diagnosis of neurodegenerative disorders

Prediction of cognitive impairment via deep learning trained with multi-center neuropsychological test data

Background Neuropsychological tests (NPTs) are important tools for informing diagnoses of cognitive impairment (CI). However, interpreting NPTs requires specialists and is thus time-consuming. To streamline the application of NPTs in clinical settings, we developed and evaluated the accuracy of a machine learning algorithm using multi-center NPT data. Methods Multi-center data were obtained from 14,926 formal neuropsychological assessments (Seoul Neuropsychological Screening Battery), which were classified into normal cognition (NC), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimers disease dementia (ADD). We trained a machine learning model with artificial neural network algorithm using TensorFlow (https://www.tensorflow.org) to distinguish cognitive state with the 46-variable data and measured prediction accuracies from 10 randomly selected datasets. The features of the NPT were listed in order of their contribution to the outcome using Recursive Feature Elimination. Results The ten times mean accuracies of identifying CI (MCI and ADD) achieved by 96.66 ± 0.52% of the balanced dataset and 97.23 ± 0.32% of the clinic-based dataset, and the accuracies for predicting cognitive states (NC, MCI or ADD) were 95.49 ± 0.53 and 96.34 ± 1.03%. The sensitivity to the detection CI and MCI in the balanced dataset were 96.0 and 96.0%, and the specificity were 96.8 and 97.4%, respectively. The time orientation and 3-word recall score of MMSE were highly ranked features in predicting CI and cognitive state. The twelve features reduced from 46 variable of NPTs with age and education had contributed to more than 90% accuracy in predicting cognitive impairment. Conclusions The machine learning algorithm for NPTs has suggested potential use as a reference in differentiating cognitive impairment in the clinical setting.The publication costs, design of the study, data management and writing the manuscript for this article were supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017S1A6A3A01078538), Korea Ministry of Health & Welfare, and from the Original Technology Research Program for Brain Science through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Korean Government (MSIP; No. 2014M3C7A1064752)

Risk of Psoriasis in Postgastrectomy Gastric Cancer Survivors: A Nationwide Population-Based Cohort Study

Background: Although patients with psoriasis have an increased risk of cancers, little is known about the risk of psoriasis in cancer patients. Objective: We aimed to comparatively analyze the incidence and risk factors of psoriasis in gastric cancer patients who underwent gastrectomy and in the general population. Methods: A nationwide retrospective cohort of 52,608 gastric cancer survivors (2007-2015) was compared to 123,438 matched controls from the general population to estimate the incidence and hazard ratio (HR) of new-onset psoriasis. We also calculated the HRs for psoriasis according to adjuvant cancer treatment, obesity, and vitamin B-12 supplementation in gastric cancer survivors. Results: During a mean follow-up of 6.85 years, 645 of the 52,608 gastric cancer patients developed psoriasis, while 1,806 in the 123,438 matched control group developed psoriasis. Gastric cancer patients had a decreased risk of psoriasis (HR, 0.86; 95% confidence interval, 0.79 similar to 0.94), especially those who underwent subtotal gastrectomy. We found that vitamin B-12 supplementation for more than 3 years had an additive effect on decreasing the risk of psoriasis in gastric cancer patients who underwent subtotal gastrectomy. Total gastrectomy, radio/chemotherapy, and obesity did not affect the risk of psoriasis in gastric cancer survivors. Conclusion: The incidence of psoriasis is slightly lower in gastric cancer survivors than in the general population. Our results suggest that the development of psoriasis may be reduced by removing the source of systemic inflammation caused by Helicobacter pylori infection through subtotal gastrectomy in gastric cancer survivors.N

IL-6, VEGF, KC and RANTES Are a Major Cause of a High Irritant Dermatitis to Phthalic Anhydride in C57BL/6 Inbred Mice

Background: In previous studies, several strains of mice were used as chemical-induced skin irritation models to identify immunological hazards and elucidate the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which irritant dermatitis disease occur. BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice have been used for most of these experiments. Although there are some differences in the immune response to chemical allergens between these strains, few studies have been conducted to determine what regulatory factors contribute to these variations. Methods: To investigate the cause of high responses to skin irritation in C57BL/6 mice that are widely used to study atopic dermatitis, changes in various immune-related factors such as ear thickness, myeloperoxidase activity, lymph node weight, IgE concentration and cytokine concentration were measured in C57BL/6 and BALB/c mice following phthalic anhydride (PA) treatment. Results: Based on analysis of the skin irritation, C57BL/6 mice showed a greater skin irritation to PA than BALB/c mice, although the IgE concentration and auricular lymph node weight did not contribute to this difference in the response. However, the concentration of several cytokines and chemokines (interleukin [IL]-6 and vascular endothelial growth factor [VEGF], keratinocyte-derived chemokine [KC] and regulated on activation normal T cell expressed and secreted [RANTES]) were significantly higher in C57BL/6 mice than BALB/c mice following treatment with PA. Conclusions: Our results suggest that several of the cytokines and chemokines secreted from irritant site could contribute to the regulation mechanism responsible for the difference in the skin irritation among various strains of mice following exposure to PA

Relationship between Particulate Matter (PM10) and Airway Inflammation Measured with Exhaled Nitric Oxide Test in Seoul, Korea

PURSPOSE: Particulate matter (PM) is increasing every year in Asia. It is not fully understood how the airway is affected when inhaling PM. We investigated the correlation between particulate matter with a diameter of less than 10 μm (PM10) and fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) to determine whether PM causes airway inflammation. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We analyzed patients who visited our outpatient clinic and tested FeNO from January 2016 to December 2017 at the Korea University Guro Hospital. PM10 data were provided by the government of the Republic of South Korea, and measuring station of PM10 is located 800 meters from the hospital. We analyzed the correlation between PM10 and FeNO by a Pearson correlation analysis and by a multivariate linear regression analysis. To identify the most correlated times, we analyzed the correlation between the FeNO and PM10 daily average from the day of visit to 4 days before visit. RESULTS: FeNO positively correlated with PM10 at two days before hospital visit in the Pearson correlation (Pearson correlation coefficient = 0.057; -value = 0.023) and in the multivariate linear regression analysis (B = 0.051, -value = 0.026). If the PM10 increased by 100 μg/m3, the FeNO result was expected to rise to 8.3 ppb in healthy people without respiratory disease. CONCLUSION: The positive correlation was found in both healthy people and asthmatic patients. Therefore, PM10 can increase airway inflammation

Mechanical ventilation in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in Korea: a nationwide cohort study

Background/Aims The prognosis of patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation is poor. Therefore, mechanical ventilation is not recommended. Recently, outcomes of mechanical ventilation, including those for patients with IPF, have improved. The aim of this study was to investigate changes in the use of mechanical ventilation in patients with IPF and their outcomes over time. Methods This retrospective, observational cohort study used data from the National Health Insurance Service database. Patients diagnosed with IPF between January 2011 and December 2019 who were placed on mechanical ventilation were included. We analyzed changes in the use of mechanical ventilation in patients with IPF and their mortality using the Cochran-Armitage trend test. Results Between 2011 and 2019, 1,227 patients with IPF were placed on mechanical ventilation. The annual number of patients with IPF with and without mechanical ventilation increased over time. However, the ratio was relatively stable at approximately 3.5%. The overall hospital mortality rate was 69.4%. There was no improvement in annual hospital mortality rate. The overall 30-day mortality rate was 68.7%, which did not change significantly. The overall 90-day mortality rate was 85.3%. The annual 90-day mortality rate was decreased from 90.9% in 2011 to 83.1% in 2019 (p = 0.028). Conclusions Despite improvements in intensive care and ventilator management, the prognosis of patients with IPF receiving mechanical ventilation has not improved significantly