“Stool may be perceived as useless and dirty, but used in the right way it actually can save lives to those in dire need.”Kim Seok-jin, director of Kim Seok-jin Probiotics Lab 김석진좋은균연구소 and Gold Biome 골드바이옴, expressed his confidence that stool transplant can improve and even save lives of patients, who suffer from chronic intestine disorders.Kim, who started out his career in periodont
Choo Moo-jin, president of the Korean Medical Association, a group of Korean medical doctors, went on a hunger strike since Wednesday evening. It is his second fasting protest following the first in January 2015, for the same reason – to block Oriental medicine practitioners’ move from using modern medical devices.■ Related: Conflict between healthcare workers intensifies over medical device u
It seems as if not a day passes by without Food and Drug Safety Minister Ryu Young-jin getting caught in one scandal or another. Already rapped for his lack of expertise in dealing with the scandal over pesticide-tainted eggs, Ryu has come under fire over allegedly abusing his power to ask a ministry staff to run his errands.It was just a couple of days ago that Kim was criticized for tak
“BCM (Body Composition Monitoring) can decide the way to manage fluid for dialysis patients and confirm an appropriate range. If you can maintain the fluid condition of people with kidney problems to a normal level through this fluid management, it will significantly help control blood pressure and improve symptoms.”So said Dr. Elizabeth J. Lindley at St. James's University Hospital in the Uni
Minister of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) Ryu Young-jin took an inappropriate leave while the nation was mired in controversy over the illegal use of pesticides on eggs, an opposition lawmaker said Sunday. Rep. Kim Soon-raey김순례 of the opposition Liberty Korea Party자유한국당 said Minister Ryu류영진, although he couldn’t use annual leave because he had been at the job less than three months, used three d
Jeong Eun-kyeong 정은경, director of Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC)질병관리본부, said KCDC would build a closer cooperation system with primary medical institutions to strengthen the monitoring of infectious diseases. For example, KCDC will sign an MOU with Korean Medical Association (KMA)대한의사협회 to provide information about infectious diseases through text messages a
New medical technologies, including genomic editing called CRISPR, reproduction, and artificial intelligent (AI) Watson, have advanced the era to cure diseases completely with all limits to treating diseases seeming to have disappeared.As medical technology develops, however, doctors have gotten preoccupied with “how to judge and act.”Gradually some doctors have begun to stress the importa
Liver cancer, one of the four deadliest cancers in Korea, is called a "silent killer" because the diagnosis and the treatment are tricky.Incidence rate of Hepatitis B, which has been cited as one of the major causes of liver cancer, has been significantly reduced due to the improved vaccination and treatment. But how come the incidence of liver cancer and the follow-up reduction in deaths have
Shire Korea is stepping up sales promotion for Mezavant (compound: mesalazine) to dominate the domestic market for ulcerative colitis therapies. Global guidelines advise the use of 5-ASA-affiliated drugs as the primary treatment of ulcerative colitis. Among the 5-ASA-affiliated drugs, doctors mainly prescribe mesalazine products, which cause less side effects than sulfasalazine products. Shire’s M
Salespeople are the most stressed group at most business corporations. Nowhere is this truer than in Korea’s pharmaceutical industry, in which drug makers producing similar medicines compete for even a razor-thin market share.YuYu Pharmaceuticals Inc.유유제약 wants their marketing staffs to do something other than maximizing revenue – to become stage performers.Responses from sales workers are
President Moon Jae-in appointed Jeong Eun-kyeong정은경 as the new director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(KCDC)질병관리본부 Thursday. Jeong, a former doctor, is heading KCDC’s Emergency Situation Center.Jung saw her salary cut because of ineffective dealing with the outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in May 2016. This notwithstanding, Moon named her to
There is an expert who proposes “exercise” as a solution to reduce the management costs of chronic diseases, which have been surging because of population aging. Making such a proposal in the middle of the Korean medical community, which has a strong perception that “exercise is not medical treatment,” is Professor Kim Jin-gu김진구, an orthopedist at Konkuk University Medical Center (KUMC)건국대병원.P
Sanofi Pasteur Korea사노피파스퇴르, the vaccines division of the multinational pharmaceutical Sanofi사노피, has appointed Baptiste de Clarens as their new CEO, the company said Wednesday.De Clarens joined Sanofi Pasteur in 2006, where he was responsible for improving efficiency across marketing and operations across the company in Lyon, France. Since then, he has been in charge of business operations ac
Actor You A-in, who reportedly had suffered from osteocystoma, became a patient of osteosarcoma which is cancer, at some point.Osteocystoma is a benign tumor of bone, and patients have only to observe proceedings without special treatment. If they feel pain or a fracture occurs, patients undergo surgery to remove it. On the other hand, Osteosarcoma, a malignant tumor, is cancer and patients sh
Siemens Healthcare Korea has appointed Lee Myung-gyun이명균 as its new president, the company said Monday.Lee joined Siemens in 2002 as the president of Siemens Communications in Korea after working at LG Information & Communications, HP Korea, and Cisco Systems Korea.He became the president of Nokia Siemens Networks Korea in 2007 and had also been leading Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics D
Who’s who of the domestic digital healthcare sector have got together. The reason: to promote digital healthcare startups. They are Choi Yoon-sup최윤섭, director of Digital Healthcare Institute, Jeong Ji-hoon정지훈, a professor at Kyung Hee University, who is also a doctor and an IT fusion expert, and Kim Chi-won김치원, head of Seoul Wise Hospital who is also an internal medicine specialist and a former co
Since the introduction of Non-Vitamin K Antagonist Oral Anticoagulant (NOAC), there have been many changes in the treatment of atrial fibrillation, one of the typical arrhythmia symptoms. Currently, NOAC is rapidly replacing traditional standard medication therapy, warfarin, taking advantage of the sharp improvement in efficacy and safety as an oral medication.However, there are concerns about
There are about 7,000 rare diseases found worldwide, but a fraction of them have any treatments. Fortunately, Gaucher’s disease, an illness caused by the lack of the enzyme, is one of the few that have found the treatment. Doctors still consider it a disease whose patients are hard to find, however, as the popular awareness of its remains low and its diagnosis quite tricky.There are currently
“Macular degeneration,” changes occurring in macular which results in the visual impairment, and “diabetic retinopathy,” which takes place in retina resulting from diabetic complication, are both senile eye diseases.Recently, the number of the elderly with the disease has been growing fast along with the increase of aged people. Medicines to treat these diseases, however, are all imports. The
President Moon Jae-in has appointed Kwon Deok-cheol권덕철 as vice minister of health and welfare, promoting him from the post of assistant minister for planning and coordination.The Presidential Blue House Tuesday said Kwon is “a veteran policymaker who has a thorough understanding of healthcare issues and real ability to communicate with the field.”Kwon, born in Namwon, North Jeolla Province