Publications by authors named "Hee-Joo Park"

Although the discovery of antibiotics has made significant positive contributions to public health and medicine, it now poses a serious threat due to the increasing antibiotic resistance in various bacteria. Carbapenem-resistant and multidrug-resistant (MDR) Acinetobacter baumannii is spreading globally, exacerbating respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cystic fibrosis. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), with broad antibacterial activity, have emerged as promising alternatives for treating MDR A.

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Article Synopsis
  • Osteoporosis (OP) is a growing health issue linked to aging, and there's increasing interest in using herbal medicines (HMs) alongside bisphosphonates (BPs), the standard OP treatment, to enhance bone mineral density (BMD).
  • A systematic review analyzed 43 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving about 4,470 participants to compare the effects of HMs with BPs against BPs alone on BMD.
  • Results indicated that combining HMs and BPs significantly improved BMD more than BPs alone, but the findings are tempered by high variability among the studies and low confidence in the evidence, suggesting more rigorous research is needed.
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Unlabelled: Our review of 52 RCTs from 5 databases suggests a tendency for notable improvement in BMD when combining herbal medicine with supplements (calcium and vitamin D variants) compared to supplement monotherapy in primary osteoporosis. However, caution is needed in interpreting results due to substantial heterogeneity among included studies.

Purpose: To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to determine whether herbal medicine (HM) plus supplements such as calcium (Ca) or vitamin D (Vit.

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Purpose: Recent studies have shown that two-dimensional (2D) culture of primary rabbit and immortalized human meibomian gland epithelial cells (iHMGEC) do not recapitulate normal meibocyte differentiation and fail to express critical enzymes necessary for synthesis of meibum lipids. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that 3D-spheroid culture of iHMGEC can facilitate meibocyte differentiation and induce the expression of acyl-CoA wax-alcohol acyltransferase 2 (AWAT2), shown to be required for synthesis of meibum wax esters.

Methods: iHMGEC were suspended in matrigel/basement membrane matrix and grown in proliferation media to form distinct cell clusters or spheroids.

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We developed an antimicrobial peptide (AMP) as a candidate substance for replacing antibiotics. Previously, a novel 18-amino acid antimicrobial peptide Hylin a1 was isolated from an electro-stimulated arboreal South American frog Hypsiboas albopunctatus, and was found to demonstrate antimicrobial activity and cytotoxicity. In a recent study, the analog peptides were designed based on the parent peptide Hylin a1 to decrease toxicity and to maintain antimicrobial efficacy.

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