Summer is a season for outdoor activity, including various leisure activities. People pay little attention to health issues except for troubles in the digestive system, such as food poisoning, during the season. If you also think so, you may be wrong. In summer you'd better greater attention to health issues besides food poisoning – one of them is dizziness. In summer, many people complai
Researchers at Samsung Medical Center have found critical characteristics of Asian women with breast cancer, finding them to be younger and sometimes face a worse prognosis than Westerners.Breast cancer is known to occur mainly after menopause, according to studies that have shown 85 percent of cases arising in postmenopausal women in America and Europe.According to Samsung Medical Center
Researchers at Severance Hospital have discovered a targeted anticancer therapy candidate for a type of refractory stomach cancer called epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-subtype gastric cancer.The findings are expected to drive forward therapy development for other refractory cancers the researchers said.EMT in gastric cancer is the process of epithelial cancer cells turning into tu
Researchers at Chung-Ang University Hospitals (CAUH) have found that mutated version of the rotavirus has increased after the vaccination became available in Korea in 2007, the hospital said Friday.Rotavirus is a virus that can cause acute gastroenteritis in infants under the age of five. Its symptoms include vomiting, fever, and dehydration. The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated
Korea is suffering from a loneliness epidemic.Based on a survey conducted by the Korean Clinical Psychology Association (KCPA) on 317 of its members, experts assessed the psychological state of Korean society as having a score of 78 on the association’s solitude index.The psychologists pointed out individualism (62.1 percent) as the primary cause of increased loneliness in Korea. Other fac
A medical journal has recently raised safety concerns regarding apitherapy, a type of alternative medicine that uses various honey bee products, such as honey, propolis, royal jelly, or even venom.Bee sting acupuncture, which is a form of apitherapy, involves a therapist holding a honey bee by its head and pinching it until the bee's stinger emerges and punctures the patient's skin. Asian coun
A research team from Yonsei University College of Medicine has discovered the survival mechanism of cancer stem cells and a corresponding anticancer drug combination that can kill them, Severance said Tuesday.Stem cells, which can repeat the process of growth and regeneration, are found in tissues in the body, including in cancer tissues. Up to 2 percent of cancer tissues are comprised of canc
The Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) said Tuesday that the total number of patients suffering from hypochondriac delusion hit 3,817 in 2016.Hypochondriasis is a condition in which a person is inordinately worried about having a serious illness.Those in their 60s suffered more from the condition than any other age groups. Over the cited period, those in their 60s accoun
Researchers at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) have identified genes responsible for diabetic kidney disease and its pathogenesis.Diabetic kidney disease is a type of kidney disease caused by diabetes. Kidney damage caused by diabetes usually occurs slowly and can cause wastes to build up in a patient’s body while causing other health problems.The research te
Researchers at Seoul National University College of Engineering and Yonsei University School of Medicine have developed artificial intelligence (AI) that can improve the accuracy of CRISPR-Cpf1, a gene editing technology.CRISPR is a vital tool in gene correction technology capable of cutting strands of DNA and selectively correct specific genetic information in cells. It consists of a cleavage
Researchers at Asan Medical Center (AMC) have developed a bacterial target nanomaterial that reduces antibiotic use to one-tenth, the hospital said Tuesday.The AMC team led by Professor Joo Jin-myung of the department of convergence medicine developed a new peptide that can selectively target tissues, in which the inflammatory response to bacterial infections occur, using a phage display t
The postmenopausal use of aromatase inhibitor (AI) on breast cancer patients, originally intended to prevent recurrence, raises the chance of fracture, a local study showed.The National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) Ilsan Hospital recently unveiled the study, named “the fracture risk caused by anti-hormonal drugs in postmenopausal women with breast cancer.” The hospital used NHIS data for th
A local firm has won a patent in testing fetal sex chromosome abnormalities using next-generation sequencing (NGS), amid a rise in the number of first-time mothers aged over 35.The Korean Intellectual Property Office registered the patent for Eone Diagnomics Genome Center (EDGC)’s “new method in screening a fetus’ sex and sex chromosome abnormalities in various platforms” as of Jan. 5. The res
New research says ovarian cancer patients should get postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy (POAC) earlier than later – proving those who got POAC within 42 days after completing neoadjuvant chemotherapy lived longer.Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) refers to medicines administered before surgery while POAC refers to those given after surgery.No guidelines exist regarding when to get POAC after
The National Cancer Center (NCC) said Tuesday that it has established ASpedia, a comprehensive database of “alternative human splicing,” to help find biomarkers that can diagnose cancer early.Alternative splicing is a process where a single gene can produce various combinations of proteins. Such factor is important as even the same gene produces slightly different protein isotopes, which in tu
Researchers at Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have developed an exosome that can effectively break down the extracellular matrix around the cancer cell, the institute said Monday.The exosome is a cell-mediated intercellular signaling nanomaterial that has emerged as a key issue in recent cell regeneration, therapy, and diagnostic research. The research team led by KIST Pr
Researchers at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital (SNUBH) have developed for the first time a test that can differentiate benign and malignant ovarian tumors through a simple blood test, the hospital said Monday.Ovarian cancer is one of the three major cancers contracted by women along with breast and cervical cancer. The tumor is easily treatable in earlier stages, but as it does
A study has found that radiofrequency ablation, which removes benign “nodules” from the thyroid gland using high frequency instead of surgery, is effective for patients with malignant recurrent thyroid cancer. Professor Baek Jung-hwan백정한 of Asan Medical Center서울아산병원 Department of Radiology treated 61 patients with recurrent thyroid cancer with high risk for surgery or difficulty operating with
A Seoul National University Hospital research team has developed a method to minimize the damage to the calf nerve through the cadaveric study of “sural nerve splitting in reverse sural artery perforator flap.”The study, led by Professors Jang Hak장학 and Kim Byung-joon김병준, was selected as the cover for the November’s issue of the Journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the hospital
A research team at the Severance Hospital has confirmed that chemical 4-Hydroxybenzaldehyde (4-HBA) extracted from Tian Ma, a Chinese herb scattered all over Korea, has the effect of promoting wound healing, the hospital said Monday.The human skin is the primary line of defense that forms a barrier against disease-causing substances that penetrate from the outside. In particular, the skin barr