Translation of Korean Medicine Use to ICD-Codes Using National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort

Background. Korean medicine was incorporated into the Korean Classification of Diseases (KCD) 6 through the development of U codes (U20–U99). Studies of the burden of disease have used summary measures such as disability-adjusted life years. Although Korean medicine is included in the official health care system, studies of the burden of disease that include Korean medicine are lacking. Methods. A data-based approach was used with National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort data for the year 2012. U code diagnoses for patients covered by National Health Insurance were collected. Using the main disease and subdisease codes, the proportion of U codes was redistributed into the related KCD 6 codes and visualized. U code and KCD code relevance was appraised prior to the analysis by consultation with medical professionals and from the beta draft version of the International Classification of Diseases-11 traditional medicine chapter. Results. This approach enabled redistribution of U codes into KCD 6 codes. Musculoskeletal diseases had the greatest increase in the burden of disease through this approach. Conclusion. This study provides a possible method of incorporating Korean medicine into burden of disease analyses through a data-based approach. Further studies should analyze potential yearly differences

Neuroprotective Effects of Cuscutae Semen in a Mouse Model of Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative movement disorder that is characterized by the progressive degeneration of the dopaminergic (DA) pathway. 1-Methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) causes damage to the DA neurons, and 1-4-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium (MPP+) causes cell death in differentiated PC12 cells that is similar to the degeneration that occurs in PD. Moreover, MPTP treatment increases the activity of the brain’s immune cells, reactive oxygen species- (ROS-) generating processes, and glutathione peroxidase. We recently reported that Cuscutae Semen (CS), a widely used traditional herbal medicine, increases cell viability in a yeast model of PD. In the present study, we examined the inhibitory effect of CS on the neurotoxicity of MPTP in mice and on the MPP+-induced cell death in differentiated PC12 cells. The MPTP-induced loss of nigral DA neurons was partly inhibited by CS-mediated decreases in ROS generation. The activation of microglia was slightly inhibited by CS, although this effect did not reach statistical significance. Furthermore, CS may reduce the MPP+ toxicity in PC12 cells by suppressing glutathione peroxidase activation. These results suggest that CS may be beneficial for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as PD

Association between work-related physical activity and depressive symptoms in Korean workers: data from the Korea national health and nutrition examination survey 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020

Abstract Background The workplace experiences of employees can impact their mental health. Depressive symptoms, which are experienced by workers, are a mental health issue that deserves attention. Several studies have evaluated physical activity to prevent possible depression in workers in a work environment, however, research on physical activity and depression symptoms directly related to work is still insufficient. Therefore, we aimed to identify the relationship between work-related physical activity and depression among South Korean workers. Methods We used data from the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted in 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020, which included 31,051 participants. We excluded, participants aged < 15 years (n = 4,663), unemployed and economically inactive persons (n = 9,793), those who did not engage in work-related physical activities (n = 1,513) and leisure physical activities (n = 1,558), or those with missing data (n = 450). Therefore, the study included 13,074 participants. Work-related activity was measured by self-reporting, while depressive symptoms were measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to investigate the association between work-related physical symptoms and depressive symptoms among workers. Results Individuals who engaged in work-related physical activity had higher PHQ-9 scores than those who did not (male: odds ratio [OR]: 1.71, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.16–2.52; female: OR: 2.33, 95% CI: 1.66–3.29). High-intensity work-related physical activity significantly increased depressive symptoms (male: OR: 2.15, 95% CI: 1.04–4.43; female: OR: 2.90, 95% CI: 1.46–5.96). When classified according to the severity of depressive symptom, the OR of depressive symptoms of workers engaged in both leisure and work-related physical activities tended to be lower than that of those engaged only in work-related physical activities. Conclusion Korean workers who engaged in work-related physical activities exhibited more depressive symptoms. Therefore, our findings suggest that balancing work-related and leisure physical activities can help Korean workers prevent development of depressive symptoms

Association between weekend catch-up sleep and dyslipidemia among Korean workers

Abstract Within competitive sociocultural environments, most Korean workers are likely to shorten their sleep duration during the weekday. Short sleep duration is associated with dyslipidemia; however, studies on the correlation between various sleep patterns and dyslipidemia are still lacking. In hence this study aimed to investigate the association between weekend catch-up sleep (CUS) and dyslipidemia among South Korean workers. Our study used data from the 8th Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES). The analysis covered 4,085 participants, excluding those who were diagnosed with dyslipidemia and not currently participating in economic activities. Weekend CUS was calculated as the absolute difference between self-reported weekday and weekend sleep duration. Dyslipidemia was diagnosed based on the levels of total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and triglycerides in blood samples collected after 9–12 h of fasting. After adjusting for sociodemographic, economic, health-related, and sleep-related factors, a negative association of weekend CUS with dyslipidemia was observed in male workers (odds ratio: 0.76, 95% confidence interval: 0.61–0.95). Further, workers with total sleep duration of 7–8 h, night workers, and white-collar workers with CUS were at relatively low risk of dyslipidemia compared to the non-CUS group. Less than 2 h of weekend CUS was negatively related to dyslipidemia in Korean workers, especially males. This suggests that sleeping more on weekends for workers who had a lack of sleep during the week can help prevent dyslipidemia

A Photoplethysmogram Dataset for Emotional Analysis

In recent years, research on emotion classification based on physiological signals has actively attracted scholars’ attention worldwide. Several studies and experiments have been conducted to analyze human emotions based on physiological signals, including the use of electrocardiograms (ECGs), electroencephalograms (EEGs), and photoplethysmograms (PPGs). Although the achievements with ECGs and EEGs are progressive, reaching higher accuracies over 90%, the number of studies utilizing PPGs are limited and their accuracies are relatively lower than other signals. One of the difficulties in studying PPGs for emotional analysis is the lack of open datasets (there is a single dataset to the best of the authors). This study introduces a new PPG dataset for emotional analysis. A total of 72 PPGs were recorded from 18 participants while watching short video clips and analyzed in time and frequency domains. Moreover, emotional classification accuracies with the presented dataset were presented with various neural network structures. The results prove that this dataset can be used for further emotional analysis with PPGs

Utilization patterns of traditional medicine in Taiwan and South Korea by using national health insurance data in 2011.

BackgroundThe growing popularity of traditional medicine (TM) is reflected in the increasing trend for its use worldwide. Many people are turning to use TM as a complementary or integrative treatment. The aim of this study is to present the first nationwide report describing the use of TM in two countries (South Korea and Taiwan).Materials and methodsTo present the TM utilization patterns between South Korea and Taiwan, we analyzed data from the National Health Insurance cohorts in each country, each of which has approximately one million inhabitants.ResultsIn total, 261,478 (25.5%) of 1,025,340 people in South Korea and 260,529 (26.8%) of 970,866 people in Taiwan used TM services at least once under the National Health Insurance in 2011. Using multivariable logistic regression, TM users in South Korea were significantly more likely to be female, 61-80 years of age and individuals with a high income, and those in Taiwan were significantly more likely to be female, 21-40 years of age and individuals with a middle income. The two countries showed similar utilization patterns in visit seasons. People visited TM clinics more frequently than TM hospitals in both countries. The most common TM treatment in South Korea was acupuncture, whereas in Taiwan, various powdered Chinese herbal preparations were the most commonly used treatment. The most common diseases for people seeking TM services were musculoskeletal system and connective tissue diseases in South Korea and Symptoms, signs, and ill-defined conditions in Taiwan.ConclusionAccording to the National Health Insurance database, about one fourth of the NHI beneficiaries of South Korea and Taiwan had TM use in 2011. Different TM utilization patterns existed between South Korea and Taiwan, which might be due to the differences in insurance coverage between the two countries

Symptom Management and Quality of Life of Breast Cancer Patients Using Acupuncture-Related Therapies and Herbal Medicine: A Scoping Review

The side effects associated with breast cancer treatments often reduce the patients&rsquo; quality of life. The effectiveness of acupuncture-related therapies and herbal medicine in managing the side effect is not fully understood. The study included clinical studies published in the 10 years since 2011 and analyzed the effectiveness of the therapies for managing side effects of anticancer treatment. The databases of MEDLINE via PubMed, CENTRAL, EMBASE, OASIS, and NSDL were searched. Thirty studies, including 13 (43.3%) randomized controlled trials (RCTs), 12 (40.0%) before-and-after studies, three (10.0%) case series, one (3.3%) case report, and one (3.3%) non-RCT, were included in this review. The main symptoms identified were aromatase inhibitors-induced arthralgia (AIA), lymphedema, and chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN). The types of acupuncture-related therapies applied included manual acupuncture, electro-acupuncture, moxibustion, and electro-moxibustion. In ten studies, eight herbal medications were administered. The Brief Pain Inventory-Short Form (BPI-SF) and Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General (FACT-G) and -Breast (FACT-B) were frequently used to evaluate pain and QoL, respectively. Most studies suggested beneficial effects of acupuncture and herbal medicine on managing pain, daily function, and quality of life in patients going through AIA, CIPN, and/or lymphedema, with mild side effects. The scoping review implies the potential of CAM therapies as promising interventions for managing symptoms which otherwise lack alternative management options, and for improving the quality of life of breast cancer patients

Prediction of Content Success and Cloud-Resource Management in Internet-of-Media-Things Environments

In Internet-of-Media-Things (IoMT) environments, users can access and view high-quality Over-the-Top (OTT) media services anytime and anywhere. As the number of OTT platform users has increased, the original content offered by such OTT platforms has become very popular, further increasing the number of users. Therefore, effective resource-management technology is an essential aspect for reducing service-operation costs by minimizing unused resources while securing the resources necessary to provide media services in a timely manner when the user’s resource-demand rates change rapidly. However, previous studies have investigated efficient cloud-resource allocation without considering the number of users after the release of popular content. This paper proposes a technology for predicting and allocating cloud resources in the form of a Long-Short-Term-Memory (LSTM)-based reinforcement-learning method that provides information for OTT service providers about whether users are willing to watch popular content using the Korean Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformer (KoBERT). Results of simulating the proposed technology verified that efficient resource allocation can be achieved by maintaining service quality while reducing cloud-resource waste depending on whether content popularity is disclosed

Alkylthiazole-based semicrystalline polymer donors for fullerene-free organic solar cells

Fullerene-free organic solar cells (FF-OSCs) composed of a wide-bandgap polymer donor (PD) and a small-bandgap organic small-molecule acceptor (SMA) are currently showing promising power conversion efficiency with good long-term stability. Herein, we synthesized three kinds of electron deficient alkylthiazole-based PDs for FF-OSCs. The synthesized 2,5-bis(5-bromo-4-octylthiazol-2-yl)thiophene (OTz) monomer has a simple conjugated backbone structure composed of thiophene and thiazole rings and is easily synthesized from relatively cheap starting materials, thiophene and 2-decanone, with an overall yield of 48%. To evaluate the photovoltaic properties of the OTz moiety, it is copolymerized with several benzodithiophene-based comonomers. All of the PDs are semicrystalline because of the highly planar backbone structure of OTz. Among them, the PTBOTz polymer exhibits superior absorption, hole mobility and charge separation properties, and thus the photovoltaic device based on PTBOTz and the SMA exhibited the best PCE of 8.32% with excellent thermal stability. Analyzing the nanomorphology and charge separation and transport properties of the PDs and SMA, we found that sizable crystallinity without severe molecular aggregation in blend films is critical to improving the PCE as well as the thermal stability of FF-OSCs