Publications by authors named "Soon-Sung Kwon"

Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigated the factors that impact graft survival in patients undergoing ABO-incompatible liver transplantation (ABOi LT), analyzing data from 146 patients treated between 2012 and 2020 in South Korea.
  • - Key findings revealed that recipient age (55 years or older) and the donor's ABO blood type significantly increase the risk of graft loss, with bacterial infections being the leading cause of death among graft loss cases.
  • - The research emphasizes the need for careful consideration of these risk factors during preoperative planning and highlights the importance of close monitoring post-transplantation for at-risk recipients.
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The effect of the duration of red blood cell (RBC) storage on the outcomes of transfused patients remains controversial, and studies on patients in the emergency department (ED) are limited. This study aimed to determine the association between RBC storage duration and outcomes of patients receiving transfusions in the ED. For RBCs issued to patients in the ED between 2017 and 2022, the storage period of the RBC and data on the transfused patient were obtained.

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Peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) is an important therapeutic measure for both hematologic and non-hematologic diseases. For PBSCT to be successful, sufficient CD34 cells need to be mobilized and harvested. Although risk factors associated with poor mobilization in patients with hematologic diseases have been reported, studies of patients with non-hematologic diseases and those receiving plerixafor are rare.

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Anti-tuberculosis (AT) medications, including isoniazid (INH), can cause drug-induced liver injury (DILI), but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. In this study, we aimed to identify genetic factors that may increase the susceptibility of individuals to AT-DILI and to examine genetic interactions that may lead to isoniazid (INH)-induced hepatotoxicity. We performed a targeted sequencing analysis of 380 pharmacogenes in a discovery cohort of 112 patients (35 AT-DILI patients and 77 controls) receiving AT treatment for active tuberculosis.

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Background: The Jr antigen is a high-prevalence red blood cell (RBC) antigen. Reports on cases of fatal hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn and acute hemolytic transfusion reactions suggest that antibodies against Jr (anti-Jr) have potential clinical significance. Identifying anti-Jr is challenging owing to a lack of commercially available antisera.

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ABO antigen weakness is rarely observed in ABO typing for transfusion. Hematologic diseases and associated gene mutations have been suggested as potential causes of this phenomenon, yet the precise etiology has not been elucidated. Through ABO typing and genetic analysis data conducted over 7 years, we have reconfirmed the association between ABO antigen weakness and hematologic diseases, especially acute myeloid leukemia (odds ratio [OR], 2.

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Objective: We aimed to identify common genes and recurrent causative variants in a large group of Asian patients with different epilepsy syndromes and subgroups.

Methods: Patients with unexplained pediatric-onset epilepsy were identified from the in-house Severance Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Epilepsy Database. All patients underwent either exome sequencing or multigene panels from January 2017 to December 2019, at Severance Children's Hospital in Korea.

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Blood group antigens, which are prominently expressed in red blood cells, are important in transfusion medicine. The advent of high-throughput genome sequencing technology has facilitated the prediction of blood group antigen phenotypes based on genomic data. In this study, we analyzed data from a large Korean population to provide an updated prevalence of blood group antigen phenotypes, including rare ones.

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Article Synopsis
  • Clonal hematopoiesis (CH) involves somatic mutations in the blood stem cells of healthy individuals, linked to an increased risk of cancers and heart disease, but studies in Korean patients with associated conditions are limited.
  • A study analyzed white blood cells and plasma cell-free DNA from 121 gastric cancer patients, revealing significant CH variants in nearly 30% of cases, influenced by age and male sex.
  • The findings suggest that while CH may have potential implications for patient survival, it can also interfere with cfDNA testing, leading to false positives in diagnosing and monitoring cancers.
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  • Inborn errors of immunity (IEI) are genetic disorders that weaken the immune system, making individuals more prone to infections and related issues.
  • This study assessed the effectiveness of clinical exome sequencing (CES) in diagnosing IEI among 37 Korean patients showing potential symptoms.
  • CES successfully provided genetic diagnoses for 15 patients (40.5%), revealing several pathogenic variants, including four previously unreported, and even identified additional cases of unrecognized IEI while investigating other diseases.
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Background: Variants in the dynamin-1 () gene typically cause synaptopathy, leading to developmental and epileptic encephalopathy (DEE). We aimed to determine the genotypic and phenotypic spectrum of encephalopathy beyond DEE.

Methods: Electroclinical phenotyping and genotyping of patients with a variant were conducted for patients undergoing next-generation sequencing at our centre, followed by a systematic review.

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Background And Importance: Appropriate decision-making is critical for transfusions to prevent unnecessary adverse outcomes; however, transfusion in the emergency department (ED) can only be decided based on sparse evidence in a limited time window.

Objectives: This study aimed to identify factors associated with appropriate red blood cell (RBC) transfusion in the ED by analyzing retrospective data of patients who received transfusions at a single center.

Outcome Measures And Analysis: This study analyzed associations between transfusion appropriateness and sex, age, initial vital signs, an ED triage score [the Korean Triage and Acuity Scale (KTAS)], the length of stay, and the hemoglobin (Hb) concentration.

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Background: Blood transfusion is an essential part of medicine. However, many countries have been facing a national blood crisis. To address this ongoing blood shortage issue, there have been efforts to generate red blood cells (RBCs) in vitro, especially from human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs).

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Growing evidence indicates that early and late postzygotic mosaicism can cause neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), but detection of low variant allele frequency (VAF) mosaic variants from blood remains a challenge. Data of 2162 patients with NDDs who underwent conventional genetic tests were reviewed and a deep sequencing was performed using a specifically designed mosaic next-generation sequencing (NGS) panel in the patients with negative genetic test results. Forty-four patents with neurocutaneous syndrome, malformation of cortical development, or nonlesional epileptic encephalopathies were included.

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Article Synopsis
  • Advances in genomic analysis allow for the subclassification of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) into small-duct (SD) and large-duct (LD) types based on histological features.! -
  • Research using organoid models shows that LD-type ICC is associated with specific enriched pathways like KRAS, TGFβ, and ERBB2, while the cholangiocarcinoma class 2 signature is particularly strong in the LD subtype.! -
  • A protein-protein interaction network analysis highlights ZNF217 as a key hub protein, and gene expression profiling of ICC organoids helps identify pathways that could be targeted for treatment based on the specific ICC subtype.!
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Background: Trio test has been widely used for diagnosis of various hereditary disorders. We aimed to investigate the contribution of trio test in genetically diagnosing neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD).

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 2,059 NDD cases with genetic test results.

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Background: Hypotensive transfusion reaction (HyTR) is rare. It is characterized by a rapid onset of hypotension during transfusion, which usually resolves quickly upon cessation of transfusion. Information on the incidence and clinical characteristics of HyTR has been reported in only a few studies.

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Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) shows poor prognosis and high malignancy due to the presence of cancer-initiating cells (CICs) and characteristics of the tumor microenvironment (TME). Organoids are useful for studying PDAC, and establishing organoids is dependent on stem cell growth factors, including Wnt signaling. Herein, using a conventional organoid culture system, we demonstrated that CD44(+)CD24(+) and CD44(+)CD24(+)EpCAM(+) CICs were enriched >65% in a PDAC patient-derived organoid.

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  • Body surface potential mapping (BSPM) allows for improved diagnosis of heart conditions by analyzing electric potential distribution on the torso, showing higher sensitivity than traditional 12-lead ECG.
  • A computer simulation was conducted to model the effects of coronary occlusions at different locations in the left anterior descending artery, focusing on the ST segment period of the heart's electrical activity.
  • The study found that in the early stages of ischemia, the bipolar angle rotated counterclockwise with increased ischemic area, and in later stages, the amplitude of the ST isointegral map rose significantly as the area of ischemia grew larger.
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Aims: Early identification of individuals with insulin resistance (IR) and metabolically unhealthy state can help prevent various diseases and improve quality of life. In this study, we investigated a possible marker of IR and metabolic health status, alanine aminotransferase/aspartate aminotransferase (ALT/AST) ratio, and aimed to confirm its feasibility in a large population study.

Methods: A total of 16,371 adults from Korean National Health and Examination Survey were studied.

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Background: We intended to evaluate diagnostic utility of a targeted gene sequencing by using next generation sequencing (NGS) panel in patients with intractable early-onset epilepsy (EOE) and find the efficient analytical step for increasing the diagnosis rate.

Methods: We assessed 74 patients with EOE whose seizures started before 3 years of age using a customized NGS panel that included 172 genes. Single nucleotide variants (SNVs) and exonic and chromosomal copy number variations (CNVs) were intensively examined with our customized pipeline and crosschecked with commercial or pre-built software.

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Background And Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of stiripentol (STP) add-on therapy to valproate and clobazam in patients with Dravet syndrome (DS) according to the presence of mutations in the sodium channel alpha-1 subunit gene (SCN1A).

Methods: We performed direct sequencing to analyze SCN1A mutations in 32 patients with clinically confirmed with DS, and classified them into mutation (pathogenic or likely pathogenic) and nonmutation groups based on American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics guidelines. We compared the efficacy of STP in reducing the seizure frequency between the two groups.

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