Journal of Korean Medical Science

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

BACKGROUND: Owing to limited experience with the new vaccine platforms, discussion of vaccine safety is inevitable. However, media coverage of adverse events of special interest could influence the vaccination rate; thus, evaluating the outcomes of adverse events of special interest influencing vaccine administration is crucial. METHODS: We conducted regression discontinuity in time analysis to calculate the local average treatment effect (LATE) using datasets from Our World in Data and Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering...

BACKGROUND: Comorbidities attract enormous attention amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Mapping knowledge based on these clinical conditions is increasingly important since the pandemic is still raging and primarily affecting subjects with chronic diseases and comorbidities. Clinical presentation and complications of COVID-19 are still hot topics which are explored in numerous evidence-based publications. The aim of this study was to analyze Scopus-indexed COVID-19 papers covering comorbidities...

National cohort data collected during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) delta and omicron periods in Korea revealed a lower risk of severe infection in recipients of three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.05-0.08). The risk of death was reduced during the omicron period compared to the delta period (aOR, 0.75; 95% confidence interval, 0.67-0.84).

BACKGROUND: Drug-induced parkinsonism (DIP) is common, but diagnosis is challenging. Although dopamine transporter imaging is useful, the cost and inconvenience are problematic, and an easily accessible screening technique is needed. We aimed to determine whether optical coherence tomography (OCT) findings could differentiate DIP from Parkinson's disease (PD). METHODS: We investigated 97 de novo PD patients and 27 DIP patients using OCT and [18 F] N-(3-fluoropropyl)-2b-carbon ethoxy-3b-(4-iodophenyl) nortropane (FP-CIT) positron emission tomography...

BACKGROUND: Both neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) and neuroendocrine carcinomas (NECs) exhibit neuroendocrine differentiation and are classified as neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs). NECs and nonneuroendocrine neoplasms (non-NENs), such as adenocarcinoma, have similar mutational profiles. The purpose of this study was to identify differences in metastatic patterns and to identify the key factor causing these differences by simultaneously comparing the metastatic patterns of NETs, NECs and non-NENs from various primary organs...

BACKGROUND: We aimed to investigate the factors associated with neurological manifestations of post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) conditions. METHODS: We retrospectively collected data from 440 patients who visited our post-COVID-19 clinic more than 4 weeks after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection. We analyzed the prevalence of different neurological symptoms (brain fog, memory impairment, headache, and dizziness) and assessed the associated factors...

BACKGROUND: Autoencoder (AE) is one of the deep learning techniques that uses an artificial neural network to reconstruct its input data in the output layer. We constructed a novel supervised AE model and tested its performance in the prediction of a co-existence of the disease of interest only using diagnostic codes. METHODS: Diagnostic codes of one million randomly sampled patients listed in the Korean National Health Information Database in 2019 were used to train, validate, and test the prediction model...

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BACKGROUND: Hydrocele on the contralateral side after surgical repair is an uncommon condition compared to surgical site recurrence. Although there has been much research on metachronous contralateral inguinal hernia in children, metachronous contralateral hydrocele, which share a common pathology with inguinal hernias, has not yet been investigated. We have investigated the incidence and risk factors for metachronous contralateral occurrence of communicating and noncommunicating hydroceles in children younger than 8 years...

We present an autopsy case of a 19-year-old man with a history of epilepsy whose unwitnessed sudden death occurred unexpectedly in the night. About 4 years before death, he was diagnosed with unilateral optic neuritis (ON). Demyelinating disease was suspected, but he was lost to follow up after the recovery. Six months before death, he received a second dose of mRNA coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine. Three months before death, he experienced epileptic seizures for the first time. Seventeen days before death, he was infected with COVID-19, which showed self-limited course under home isolation...

BACKGROUND: Existing atlases for the human brainstem were generated from magnetic resonance images or traditional histologically stained slides, but both are insufficient for the identification of detailed brainstem structures at uniform intervals. METHODS: A total of 319 sectioned images of the brainstem were selected from whole-body axial sectioned images, then coronal and sagittal sectioned images were reconstructed from the horizontal images. The fine and detailed structures were annotated in PowerPoint slides, then the volume model was produced and some white matter fibers were traced using MRIcroGL...

BACKGROUND: Administration of adequate antibiotics is crucial for better outcomes in sepsis. Because no uniform tool can accurately assess the risk of multidrug-resistant (MDR) pathogens, a local antibiogram is necessary. We aimed to describe the antibiogram of MDR bacteria based on locations of sepsis onset in South Korea. METHODS: We performed a prospective observational study of adult patients diagnosed with sepsis according to Sepsis-3 from 19 institutions (13 tertiary referral and 6 university-affiliated general hospitals) in South Korea...

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has greatly altered the daily lives of people in unprecedented ways, causing a variety of mental health problems. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the prevalence of depression among Korean adults during the COVID-19 pandemic and explore the factors associated with depressive mood using data from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Survey (KNHANES). METHODS: We analyzed participants aged ≥ 19 years from KNHANES 2018 (n = 5,837) and 2020 (n = 5,265) to measure and compare the prevalence of depression before and during the COVID-19 pandemic...

BACKGROUND: The epidemiology of pathogenic bacteria varies according to the socioeconomic status and antimicrobial resistance status. However, longitudinal epidemiological studies to evaluate the changes in species distribution and antimicrobial susceptibility of pathogenic bacteria nationwide are lacking. We retrospectively investigated the nationwide trends in species distribution and antimicrobial susceptibility of pathogenic bacteria over the last 20 years in Korea. METHODS: From 1997 to 2016, annual cumulative antimicrobial susceptibility and species distribution data were collected from 12 university hospitals in five provinces and four metropolitan cities in South Korea...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Since October 2021, severe acute hepatitis of unknown etiology in pediatric patients has been observed in many countries around the world. Adenovirus (mainly enteric adenovirus) was detected in more than 50% of the cases. Nationwide surveillance on acute hepatitis of unknown etiology in pediatric patients was started in May 2022 in Korea. Taking into account the severity of the illness and the urgency of the epidemiological situation worldwide, we report a summary of changes in adenovirus epidemiology during the past five years and six months in Korea...

BACKGROUND: In Korea, patients with fever have been preemptively isolated to isolation beds in the emergency department (ED) since the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began. However, isolation beds were not always available, and transport delays or failure (nontransport), especially for infants, were reported in the media. Few studies have focused on delays and failure in transporting fever patients to the ED. Therefore, this study aimed to examine and compare the emergency medical service (EMS) time interval and nontransport rate of patients with fever using EMSs before and after COVID-19...

BACKGROUND: Respiratory pathogen infections and air pollution are main causes of acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD). Air pollution has a direct effect on the airway epithelial barrier and the immune system, which can have an influence on infection. However, studies on the relationship between respiratory infections and air pollutants in severe AECOPD are limited. Thus, the objective of this study was to investigate the correlation between air pollution and respiratory pathogen in severe AECOPD...