3-year-old female Pitbull terrier dog that had been moved to Republic of Korea was diagnosed with Ehrlichia canis infection. Abnormal findings on a complete blood count (CBC) and serum chemistry profile were moderate anemia, mild thrombocytopenia, hyperproteinemia and hyperglobulinemia. Serologic screening test by a commercial ELISA kit for Ehrlichia canis was positive, and serum antibody titer was markedly high (＞ 1 : 10240). The morula of Ehrlichia organisms was not detected in buffy coat blood smears. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was done using the peripheral blood and the result was negative. Based on the serologic test results and the clinical signs, the dog was diagnosed as ehrlichiosis. The dog responded well to doxycycline and was uneventfully recovered.
Asbestos has been produced, imported and used in various industries in Korea over the past decades.Since asbestos causes fatal diseases such as malignant mesothelioma and lung cancer, the use of asbestos has been generally banned in Korea since 2009.However, there are still many asbestos-containing materials around us, and safe management is urgently needed.This study aims to examine asbestos-related trend changes using major asbestos-related keywords based on the asbestos trend analysis using big data for the past 32 years (1991 to 2022) in Korea.In addition, we reviewed both domestic trends related to the production, import, and use of asbestos before 1990 and asbestos-related policies from 2023 to 2027.From 1991 to 2000, main keywords related to asbestos were research, workers, carcinogens, and the environment because the carcinogenicity of asbestos was highlighted due to domestic production, import, and use of asbestos.From 2001 to 2010, the main keywords related to asbestos were lung cancer, litigation, carcinogens, exposure, and companies because lawsuits were initiated in the US and Japan in relation to carcinogenicity due to asbestos.From 2011 to 2020, the high ranking keywords related to asbestos were carcinogen, baseball field, school, slate, building, and abandoned asbestos mine due to the seriousness of the asbestos problem in Korea.From 2021 to present (2023), the main search keywords related to asbestos such as school, slate (asbestos cement), buildings, landscape stone, environmental impact assessment, apartment, and cement appeared.
Background. Skin hyperpigmentation in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients has been attributed to the accumulation of middle-molecular-weight (MMW) substances. Although an MMW mechanism suggests that hyperpigmentation may be improved by high-flux haemodialysis (HF-HD) and haemodiafiltration (HDF), this possibility has not been explored. In the present study, we investigated the impact of different dialysis modalities on skin colour in HD patients.
Purines, mainly contained in meats, are metabolized finally to uric acid in humans. Although digestion of meat is impaired in end-stage renal disease patients on hemodialysis owing to anorexia and decreased taste, hyperuricemia is common in these patients. In this cross-sectional study, we analyzed demographic characteristics, normalized protein nitrogen appearance (nPNA), serum albumin concentration, and serum uric acid levels and other laboratory parameters in sixty patients on maintenance hemodialysis. There were 33 (55%) males and 27 (45%) females. The mean age was 62.9±14.3 years and the mean body mass index was 22.7±3.8 kg/m2. The mean serum uric acid level was 7.2±1.2 mg/dL, with the range of 5.1–10.8 mg/dL. There was a statistically significant correlation between serum uric level and nPNA (p < 0.05). The serum uric acid level was also positively correlated with blood urea nitrogen level (p < 0.01) and serum phosphorus level (p < 0.05). Our results suggest that serum uric acid level is associated with nutritional status, and might be a possible marker for protein nutrition in maintenance hemodialysis patients.
PURPOSE In artificial intelligence–based modeling, working with a limited number of patient groups is challenging. This retrospective study aimed to evaluate whether applying synthetic data generation methods to the clinical data of small patient groups can enhance the performance of prediction models. MATERIALS AND METHODS A data set collected by the Cancer Registry Library Project from the Yonsei Cancer Center (YCC), Severance Hospital, between January 2008 and October 2020 was reviewed. Patients with colorectal cancer younger than 50 years who started their initial treatment at YCC were included. A Bayesian network–based synthesizing model was used to generate a synthetic data set, combined with the differential privacy (DP) method. RESULTS A synthetic population of 5,005 was generated from a data set of 1,253 patients with 93 clinical features. The Hellinger distance and correlation difference metric were below 0.3 and 0.5, respectively, indicating no statistical difference. The overall survival by disease stage did not differ between the synthetic and original populations. Training with the synthetic data and validating with the original data showed the highest performances of 0.850, 0.836, and 0.790 for the Decision Tree, Random Forest, and XGBoost models, respectively. Comparison of synthetic data sets with different epsilon parameters from the original data sets showed improved performance >0.1%. For extremely small data sets, models using synthetic data outperformed those using only original data sets. The reidentification risk measures demonstrated that the epsilons between 0.1 and 100 fell below the baseline, indicating a preserved privacy state. CONCLUSION The synthetic data generation approach enhances predictive modeling performance by maintaining statistical and clinical integrity, and simultaneously reduces privacy risks through the application of DP techniques.
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