Publications by authors named "YoungEun Kim"

To combat influenza A virus (IAV) infection, it is vital to develop effective therapeutic strategies, including immunomodulators. In this study, we examined the antiviral effects of Hovenia dulcis Thunb. honey (HDH) against IAV using RAW 264.

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  • Carbamazepine (CBZ) is commonly used for various medical purposes and undergoes multiple metabolic processes, leading to different transformation products (TPs) in the environment and the human body.
  • A study analyzed CBZ distribution and its TPs in the Mangyeong and Dongjin Rivers in Korea, finding average concentrations of 128.8 ng/L and 89.0 ng/L, respectively, with higher levels in the Mangyeong River.
  • The research identified and ranked several TPs based on detection frequency, revealing that some products formed during water treatment processes, and provided insights for better wastewater management and environmental policy-making.
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Introduction: Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination rates in pregnant women remain low owing to safety concerns. When evaluating vaccine safety, comparisons with unvaccinated individuals may lead to healthy vaccinee bias. This study aimed to investigate the association between mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination and pregnancy-related adverse outcomes compared with influenza vaccination.

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Correction for 'Nucleic acid detection with single-base specificity integrating isothermal amplification and light-up aptamer probes' by Jaekyun Baek , , 2024, https://doi.org/10.1039/D4NR01638F.

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Background: Uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) is a proton uncoupler located across the mitochondrial membrane generally involved in thermogenesis of brown adipose tissues. Although UCP1 is known to be strongly expressed in brown adipocytes, recent evidence suggest that white adipocytes can also express UCP1 under certain circumstances such as cold- or β-adrenergic receptor-stimulation, allowing them to acquire brown adipocyte-like features thereby becoming 'beige' adipocytes.

Results: In this study, we report that UCP1 can be expressed in adipose-tissue macrophages (ATM) lacking functional hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) and this does not require cold- nor β-adrenergic receptor activation.

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  • The study aimed to determine how common COVID-19 reinfection is among patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and what risk factors contribute to it.
  • Researchers analyzed data from 351 RA patients who had COVID-19, finding that 12.3% experienced reinfection over an average follow-up of 1.5 years, with leflunomide use significantly linked to a higher reinfection risk.
  • Despite the reinfection occurrences, there were no notable changes in disease activity scores before and after reinfection, indicating overall stability in RA conditions.
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Upcoming regulations aim to ban per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), including commercial polymeric PFAS, or fluoropolymers, such as poly(tetrafluoroethylene) (PTFE) and poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF), due to their environmental and toxicological impacts. However, fluoropolymers also provide crucial properties for clean energy transitions, and their regulation may hinder further technological advancements. Therefore, a facile one-pot recycling-upcycling strategy for fluoropolymers using inexpensive biomass, such as cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs), as absorbents and cocomponents for fluoro-functionalized composites could align with global sustainability goals and technological demands.

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  • This study introduces a new method for detecting nucleic acids without labels, utilizing isothermal amplification and specially designed aptamer probes.
  • The assay transforms double-stranded DNA into single-stranded targets, which allows for precise hybridization with split dapoxyl aptamer probes.
  • This technique achieves extremely high sensitivity (attomolar level) and specificity for detecting changes at the single-base level.
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Background: Low muscle mass is associated with high insulin resistance and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. This study aims to determine whether low muscle mass affects the alterations in myocardial substrate metabolism that are associated with the development of cardiovascular disease.

Method: The study included 299 individuals (182 men and 117 women) who underwent examination at the Severance Health Check-up Center between January 2018 and February 2019.

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Background: Clinical manifestations and risk factors associated with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) flares, including recurrent lupus nephritis (LN), in patients with LN who undergo kidney transplantation have been unclear.

Methods: Kidney transplant recipients with LN from January 1995 to December 2021 were included in this study. A disease flare was defined as either an increase in the non-renal SLE disease activity index score or the presence of biopsy-proven recurrent LN.

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  • Paralytic shellfish toxins (PSTs) are harmful neurotoxins from microalgae that can accumulate in shellfish, posing health risks to humans.
  • A study along the southern coast of Korea looked at how PST levels varied over time and space in seawater and mussels during peak spring conditions, revealing significant differences in toxin concentrations.
  • Key factors like water temperature and salinity influenced PST production, emphasizing the need for ongoing monitoring to better understand and prevent shellfish poisoning.
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This study investigated the technical feasibility of using electrogermination to activate dormant cysts as an inoculum for subsequent 14-d photosynthetic astaxanthin production in Haematococcus lacustris. Electrotreatment affected the cell viability, surface charge, and morphology of H. lacustris cysts.

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Diagnosing the current health status and disease burden in a population is crucial for public health interventions. The ability to compare the burden of different diseases through a single measure, such as disability-adjusted life years has become feasible and continues to be produced and updated through the Global Burden of Diseases (GBD) study. However, the disease burden values of the GBD study do not accurately reflect the unique situation in a specific country with various circumstances.

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Mass cytometry uses metal-isotope-tagged antibodies to label targets of interest, which enables simultaneous measurements of ~50 proteins or protein modifications in millions of single cells, but its sensitivity is limited. Here, we present a signal amplification technology, termed Amplification by Cyclic Extension (ACE), implementing thermal-cycling-based DNA in situ concatenation in combination with 3-cyanovinylcarbazole phosphoramidite-based DNA crosslinking to enable signal amplification simultaneously on >30 protein epitopes. We demonstrate the utility of ACE in low-abundance protein quantification with suspension mass cytometry to characterize molecular reprogramming during the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition as well as the mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition.

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Due to increasing interest in adapting models on resource-constrained edges, parameter-efficient transfer learning has been widely explored. Among various methods, Visual Prompt Tuning (VPT), prepending learnable prompts to input space, shows competitive fine-tuning performance compared to training of full network parameters. However, VPT increases the number of input tokens, resulting in additional computational overhead.

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We established a protocol for the traditional Korean medicine examination (KME) and methodically gathered data following this protocol. Potential indicators for KME were extracted through a literature review; the first KME protocol was developed based on three rounds of expert opinions. The first KME protocol's feasibility was confirmed, and data were collected over four years from traditional Korean medicine (KM) hospitals, focusing on healthy adults, using the final KME protocol.

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Small plaque psoriasis is the typical form of chronic plaque psoriasis affecting adults in South Korea. The effectiveness of calcipotriol/betamethasone dipropionate (Cal/BD) aerosol foam for large and small psoriasis plaques has not previously been examined. We performed a post hoc analysis of a recent, 4-week observational study of Cal/BD aerosol foam use in routine clinical practice in South Korea.

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  • The study investigates health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE) in Korea, focusing on the disparities between HALE and overall life expectancy across different regions from 2008 to 2019.
  • Using a group-based multi-trajectory modeling approach, researchers identified seven distinct trajectory groups reflecting trends in HALE and life expectancy gaps.
  • The results highlighted areas, especially in metropolitan cities, where health levels have worsened, suggesting that these findings can inform future health policies and urban development initiatives.
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Time-To-First-Spike (TTFS) coding in Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) offers significant advantages in terms of energy efficiency, closely mimicking the behavior of biological neurons. In this work, we delve into the role of skip connections, a widely used concept in Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), within the domain of SNNs with TTFS coding. Our focus is on two distinct types of skip connection architectures: (1) addition-based skip connections, and (2) concatenation-based skip connections.

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Background: The measurement of health levels and monitoring of characteristics and trends among populations and subgroups are essential for informing evidence-based policy decisions. This study aimed to examine the burden of disease in Korea for both the total population and subgroups in 2020, as well as analyze changes in disease burden from 2008 to 2020.

Methods: We employed the methodology developed in the Korean National Burden of Disease and Injuries Study to calculate disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) by sex, causes, region, and income level from 2008 to 2020.

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  • The study analyzed healthy life expectancy (HALE) in Korea from 2008 to 2020, focusing on disparities by gender, income, and region.
  • HALE increased from 68.89 years to 71.82 years during this period, although gender disparities widened, with men experiencing a larger gap.
  • The findings suggest that improving health levels among low-income groups can help reduce health inequalities, highlighting the need for targeted health interventions in policy development.
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Background: Progranulin (PGRN) haploinsufficiency due to progranulin gene (GRN) variants can cause frontotemporal dementia (FTD) with aberrant TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43) accumulation. Despite microglial burden with TDP-43-related pathophysiology, direct microglial TDP-43 pathology has not been clarified yet, only emphasized in neuronal pathology. Thus, the objective of this study was to investigate TDP-43 pathology in microglia of patients with PGRN haploinsufficiency.

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  • The study aimed to evaluate how receiving primary and third doses of the COVID-19 vaccine influenced the risk of long-term health issues following infection.
  • Using data from South Korea, researchers tracked over 8 million vaccinated individuals and nearly 400,000 unvaccinated individuals for 30-120 days after COVID-19 infection, focusing on 26 specific health conditions.
  • Results indicated that vaccination, especially with three doses, significantly reduced the risks of various health problems, supporting the idea that vaccines can help lessen the long-term effects of COVID-19.
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