The prevalence and risk factors for pterygium in South Korea: the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

OBJECTIVES: To determine the prevalence and risk factors for pterygium in the adult Korean population of South Korea. METHODS: Data were analyzed from 9,193 participants who were 40 years of age or older from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES), conducted from 2009 to 2010. Standardized slit-lamp examinations were performed by study ophthalmologists to examine the anterior segment for evidence of pterygium. Pterygium was graded clinically as T1 (atrophic), T2 (intermediate), or T3 (opaque). Every participant underwent ocular and systemic examinations, as well as interviewer-administered questionnaires. Any evidence of pterygium and observed association between the risk factors were recorded. RESULTS: The mean age of the subjects was 55.7 (± 0.2) years. Of the 9,193 eligible subjects, 935 had pterygium in at least one eye. In a multivariate logistic regression analysis adjusted for age and sex, pterygium was significantly associated with rural vs. urban residence (odds ratio [OR], 1.7; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.4 to 2.0), lower level of education (OR, 4.5; 95% CI, 3.1 to 6.6), low income (OR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.0 to 1.8), smoking (OR, 0.7; 95% CI, 0.5 to 1.0), and more hours of sun exposure (OR, 1.5; 95% CI, 1.2 to 1.8). After adjusting for all variables, the prevalence of pterygium was significantly associated with age, sex, residence, education level, and smoking. CONCLUSIONS: This is a nationwide epidemiologic study in South Korea to assess the prevalence of and risk factors for pterygium. The overall prevalence of pterygium was 8.8% among Koreans aged 40 years or older. Older age, male gender, rural residence, lower level of education, and non-smoking were associated with the development of pterygium

Umbilical Arterial Blood Gas and Perinatal Outcome in the Second Twin according to the Planned Mode of Delivery

Purpose: To compare umbilical arterial gas parameters in the second twin of twin pregnancies according to the mode of deliver

Disorder, pseudospins, and backscattering in carbon nanotubes

We address the effects of disorder on the conducting properties of metal and semiconducting carbon nanotubes. Experimentally, the mean free path is found to be much larger in metallic tubes than in doped semiconducting tubes. We show that this result can be understood theoretically if the disorder potential is long-ranged. The effects of a pseudospin index that describes the internal sublattice structure of the states lead to a suppression of scattering in metallic tubes, but not in semiconducting tubes. This conclusion is supported by tight-binding calculations.Comment: four page

Functional role of aspartic proteinase cathepsin D in insect metamorphosis

BACKGROUND: Metamorphosis is a complex, highly conserved and strictly regulated development process that involves the programmed cell death of obsolete larval organs. Here we show a novel functional role for the aspartic proteinase cathepsin D during insect metamorphosis. RESULTS: Cathepsin D of the silkworm Bombyx mori (BmCatD) was ecdysone-induced, differentially and spatially expressed in the larval fat body of the final instar and in the larval gut of pupal stage, and its expression led to programmed cell death. Furthermore, BmCatD was highly induced in the fat body of baculovirus-infected B. mori larvae, suggesting that this gene is involved in the induction of metamorphosis of host insects infected with baculovirus. RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated BmCatD knock-down inhibited programmed cell death of the larval fat body, resulting in the arrest of larval-pupal transformation. BmCatD RNAi also inhibited the programmed cell death of larval gut during pupal stage. CONCLUSION: Based on these results, we concluded that BmCatD is critically involved in the programmed cell death of the larval fat body and larval gut in silkworm metamorphosis

Carcinoma ex Pleomorphic Adenoma of the Salivary Glands: Distinct Clinicopathologic Features and Immunoprofiles Between Subgroups According to Cellular Differentiation

In carcinoma ex pleomorphic adenoma (CXPA), pleomorphic adenoma (PA) and diverse carcinoma components showing luminal (ductal) or non-luminal (myoepithelial) differentiation coexist. To elucidate the clinicopathological implications of cellular differentiation in CXPA and the potential role of p53, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), c-erbB-2, c-kit, and glucose transporter 1 (Glut-1) in carcinogenesis, we analyzed 11 CXPAs with luminal differentiation (CXPAs-LD) and 6 CXPAs with non-luminal differentiation (CXPAs-NLD) and compared protein expressions in residual PAs and carcinomas by immunohistochemistry. Among the CXPAs-LD, 5 were invasive and 8 were histologically high-grade tumors. The 5-year survival rate was 72.7%. P53, c-erbB-2, VEGF, and Glut-1 were more immunoreactive in carcinoma components than in PAs (P = 0.008, 0.004, 0.002, and 0.024, respectively); c-erbB-2 overexpression was associated with high histological grade (P = 0.024). Carcinoma components frequently lacked c-kit expression (P = 0.009). CXPAs-NLD were all low-grade and invasive with a larger mean tumor size (5.2 cm) than CXPAs-LD (3.3 cm) (P = 0.040). The patients remained disease-free without significant immunohistochemical expression. The immunoprofiles and clinical course of CXPA differed according to cellular differentiation. Therefore, it is important to report the histological subtype and to assess potential biomarkers in diagnostic and therapeutic trials

Association analyses of East Asian individuals and trans-ancestry analyses with European individuals reveal new loci associated with cholesterol and triglyceride levels

Large-scale meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified >175 loci associated with fasting cholesterol levels, including total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), and triglycerides (TG). With differences in linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure and allele frequencies between ancestry groups, studies in additional large samples may detect new associations. We conducted staged GWAS meta-analyses in up to 69,414 East Asian individuals from 24 studies with participants from Japan, the Philippines, Korea, China, Singapore, and Taiwan. These meta-analyses identified (P < 5 × 10-8) three novel loci associated with HDL-C near CD163-APOBEC1 (P = 7.4 × 10-9), NCOA2 (P = 1.6 × 10-8), and NID2-PTGDR (P = 4.2 × 10-8), and one novel locus associated with TG near WDR11-FGFR2 (P = 2.7 × 10-10). Conditional analyses identified a second signal near CD163-APOBEC1. We then combined results from the East Asian meta-analysis with association results from up to 187,365 European individuals from the Global Lipids Genetics Consortium in a trans-ancestry meta-analysis. This analysis identified (log10Bayes Factor ≥6.1) eight additional novel lipid loci. Among the twelve total loci identified, the index variants at eight loci have demonstrated at least nominal significance with other metabolic traits in prior studies, and two loci exhibited coincident eQTLs (P < 1 × 10-5) in subcutaneous adipose tissue for BPTF and PDGFC. Taken together, these analyses identified multiple novel lipid loci, providing new potential therapeutic targets