Objective To investigate whether screening for thyroid cancer led to the current “epidemic” in South Korea.Design Review of the medical records of nationally representative samples of patients with a ...diagnosis of thyroid cancer in 1999, 2005, and 2008.Setting Sample cases were randomly selected from South Korea’s nationwide cancer registry, using a systematic sampling method after stratification by region.Participants 5796 patients with thyroid cancer were included (891 in 1999, 2355 in 2005, and 2550 in 2008).Main outcome measures The primary outcome was age standardised incidence of thyroid cancer and the changes in incidence between 1999 and 2008 according to the methods used to detect tumours (screen detection versus clinical detection versus unspecified).Results Between 1999 and 2008, the incidence of thyroid cancer increased 6.4-fold (95% confidence interval 4.9-fold to 8.4-fold), from 6.4 (95% confidence interval 6.2 to 6.6) per 100 000 population to 40.7 (40.2 to 41.2) per 100 000 population. Of the increase, 94.4% (34.4 per 100 000 population) were for tumours less than 20 mm, which were detected mainly by screening. 97.1% of the total increase was localised and regional tumours according to the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) summary stage. Where cases were clinically detected, 99.9% of the increased incidences (6.4 per 100 000 population) over the same period were tumours less than 20 mm.Conclusion The current “epidemic” of thyroid cancer in South Korea is due to an increase in the detection of small tumours, most likely as a result of overdetection. Concerted efforts are needed at a national level to reduce unnecessary thyroid ultrasound examinations in the asymptomatic general population.
This study reports the cancer statistics and temporal trends in Korea on a nationwide scale, including incidence, survival, prevalence, and mortality in 2017.
The incidence, survival, and prevalence ...rates of cancer were evaluated using data from the Korea National Cancer Incidence Database from 1999 to 2017 with follow-up until December 31, 2018. Deaths from cancer were assessed using cause-of-death data from 1983 to 2017, obtained from Statistics Korea. Crude and age-standardized rates (ASRs) for incidence, mortality, and prevalence, and 5-year relative survival rates were calculated and trend analysis was performed.
In 2017, newly diagnosed cancer cases and deaths from cancer numbered 232,255 (ASR, 264.4 per 100,000) and 78,863 (ASR, 76.6 per 100,000), respectively. The overall cancer incidence rates increased annually by 3.5% from 1999 to 2011 and decreased by 2.7% annually thereafter. Cancer mortality rates have been decreasing since 2002, by 2.8% annually. The 5-year relative survival rate for all patients diagnosed with cancer between 2013 and 2017 was 70.4%, which contributed to a prevalence of approximately 1.87 million cases by the end of 2017.
The burden of cancer measured by incidence and mortality rates have improved in Korea, with the exception of a few particular cancers that are associated with increasing incidence or mortality rates. However, cancer prevalence is increasing rapidly, with the dramatic improvement in survival during the past several years. Comprehensive cancer control strategies and efforts should continue, based on the changes of cancer statistics.
This article examines the role of national culture, measured by conflict avoidance, on the relationship between leader–member exchange (LMX) and individual employee voice. Using data collected from ...automotive industry employees in the United States and Korea, the findings show that conflict avoidance is negatively related to employee voice and also moderates the relationship between LMX and employee voice in the Korean sample. In particular, the relationship between LMX and voice becomes less positive when conflict avoidance is high. On the other hand, conflict avoidance does not have a direct effect on employee voice as well as an interactive effect with LMX on employee voice in the U.S. sample. This study, therefore, highlights the importance of the national culture in the comparative study of employee voice.
We developed a new exercise method called the submandibular push exercise that can strengthen the suprahyoid muscle by inducing only the motion of the hyoid bone without neck flexion. In this study, ...we aimed to investigate and compare the muscle activity of the suprahyoid and infrahyoid muscles in the course of performing three different swallowing exercises. Twenty healthy participants and fifteen patients with dysphagia were recruited. Each participant consecutively performed three exercises: Shaker, CTAR, and submandibular push exercises. To investigate muscle activation, surface electromyography was performed on the suprahyoid, infrahyoid, and SCM muscles, during the exercises. Root mean square (RMS) was measured. In healthy participants, the submandibular push exercise showed a significantly higher RMS value in the suprahyoid and infrahyoid muscles than the Shaker and CTAR exercises using repeated ANOVA with Tukey's post hoc test (p < 0.05). In patients with dysphagia, the submandibular push and Shaker exercises showed significantly higher RMS value in the suprahyoid and infrahyoid muscles than the CTAR exercise. However, no significant difference was found between the submandibular push and Shaker exercises. In both healthy and patients with dysphagia, the mean RMS values of the SCM muscles during the submandibular push exercise were significantly lower than those during the Shaker exercise using repeated ANOVA with Tukey's post hoc test (p < 0.05). In conclusion, considering the relatively superior selectiveness in suprahyoid and infrahyoid muscle contraction, the submandibular push exercise using visual feedback from pressure sensor could be an efficient supplementary exercise to the conventional swallowing muscle exercises. However, further studies may be necessary to confirm the improvement in swallowing difficulty.
This paper investigates empirical marginal effects of uncertainty measured by conditional variance of the stock and crude oil prices on their returns using stock index prices for U.S., Japan, Korea, ...and Hong Kong over the period 1996–2015. A time-varying parameter model with a dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) bivariate GARCH-in-Mean specification is considered to investigate time-varying marginal effects of uncertainty on the stock and crude oil returns. The empirical findings show that there exist significant negative time-varying effects of uncertainty on the returns over some sub-periods.
•Examine the time-varying causal relationship between the stock and crude oil price uncertainties and their returns•S&P500, Nikkei, KOSPI, and Hang Seng indexes and WTI and Dubai crude oil prices over the period 1996–2015 are considered.•DCC bivariate GARCH-in-Mean specification is considered to analyze the time-varying relationship.•Oil price uncertainty has negative time-varying marginal effect on the stock returns.•Stock price uncertainty has significant negative effect on the crude oil returns over the recent period.
This study presents the 2015 nationwide cancer statistics in Korea, including the incidence, survival, prevalence, and mortality.
Cancer incidence data from 1999 to 2015 was obtained from the Korea ...National Cancer Incidence Database and followed until December 31, 2016. Mortality data from 1983 to 2015 were obtained from Statistics Korea. The prevalence was defined as the number of cancer patients alive on January 1, 2016, among all cancer patients diagnosed since 1999. Crude and age-standardized rates (ASRs) for incidence, mortality and prevalence and 5-year relative survivals were also calculated.
Herein, 214,701 and 76,855 Koreans were newly diagnosed and died from cancer in 2015, respectively. The ASRs for cancer incidence and mortality in 2015 were 258.9 and 82.0 per 100,000, respectively. The overall cancer incidence rate has increased significantly by 3.4% annually from 1999 to 2012, and started to decrease after 2012 (2012-2015, annual percent change, -6.1%). However, the overall cancer mortality has decreased 2.7% annually since 2002. The 5-year relative survival rate for patients diagnosed with cancer between 2011 and 2015 was 70.7%, an improvement from the 41.2% for patients diagnosed between 1993 and 1995.
Age-standardized cancer incidence rates have decreased since 2012 and mortality rates have declined since 2002; however, the 5-year survival rates have improved remarkably from 1993-1995 to 2011-2015 in Korea.
The survival of patients with ovarian cancer has improved because of surgery and chemotherapy. This study aimed to estimate the changes in survival rates among Korean women with ovarian cancer prior ...to the introduction of targeted therapy for ovarian cancer.
Data were obtained from the Korea Central Cancer Registry regarding patients who were diagnosed with epithelial ovarian cancer between 1995 and 2014. The relative survival rates were calculated for 5-year periods using the Ederer II method. Cox proportional hazard models were created to assess the associations of demographic and clinicopathological factors with ovarian cancer survival.
During the study period, 22,880 women were diagnosed with epithelial ovarian cancer. The 5-year relative survival rate improved from 57.2% during 1995-1999 to 63.8% during 2010-2014 (P < 0.001). Survival outcomes improved between 1995 and 1999 and 2010-2014 for the serous and endometrioid carcinoma subtypes (P < 0.001). However, no improvements were observed for the mucinous and clear cell carcinoma subtypes (P = 0.189 and P = 0.293, respectively). Multivariate analysis revealed that younger age, early stage, recent diagnosis, primary surgical treatment, and non-serous histological subtype were favorable prognostic factors.
Survival outcomes have improved for serous and endometrioid epithelial ovarian cancer in the last 20 years. However, no improvement was observed for patients with mucinous and clear cell carcinoma subtypes.
This study presents the 2016 nationwide cancer statistics in Korea, including cancer incidence, survival, prevalence, and mortality.
Cancer incidence data from 1999 to 2016 were obtained from the ...Korea National Cancer Incidence Database and followed until December 31, 2017. Mortality data from 1983 to 2016 were obtained from Statistics Korea. The prevalence was defined as the number of cancer patients alive on January 1, 2017 among all cancer patients diagnosed since 1999. Crude and age-standardized rates (ASRs) for incidence, mortality, and prevalence and 5-year relative survivals were also calculated.
Overall, 229,180 and 78,194 Koreans were newly diagnosed and died from cancer in 2016, respectively. The ASRs for cancer incidence and mortality in 2016 were 269.0 and 79.8 per 100,000 individuals, respectively. The all-cancer incidence rate increased significantly by 3.6% annually from 1999 to 2011 and started to decrease after 2011 (2011-2016; annual percent change, -3.1%). However, overall cancer mortality has decreased 2.7% annually since 2002. The 5-year relative survival rate for patients diagnosed with cancer between 2012 and 2016 was 70.6%, an improvement from the 41.2% for patients diagnosed between 1993 and 1995.
The cancer prevalence in Korea has increased very fast as survival has improved remarkably. The high prevalence of cancer emphasizes the need for comprehensive cancer control efforts in Korea.
To investigate whether dental status, represented by the DMFT score, was affected by the presence of NCDs and determined the NCDs that had a greater impact on the DMFT score. This retrospective ...cross-sectional study included a total of 10,017 individuals. The presence of NCDs was investigated based on self-reported medical history recorded on each patient's dental hospital record. Individual DMFT score was evaluated on the basis of the dental records and panoramic radiographs. The data were further analyzed using multiple regression analysis and chi-squared automatic interaction detection (CHAID) analysis. A total of 5,388 individuals had more than one NCD among hypertension (HT), diabetes mellitus (DM), hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and osteoporosis. The average DMFT score was 8.62 ± 7.10 in the NCD group, significantly higher than that in those without NCD (5.53 ± 5.48) (P < 0.001). In the regression analysis, age, NCDs, and psychiatric problems were selected as risk factors of DMFT score. In the CHAID decision tree analysis, age was the risk factor that most influenced the DMFT score. HT was the most influential factor in a newly generated decision tree excluding age, and osteoporosis, DM, and CVD were important risk factors acting in the subgroups. Patients with NCD had worse dental conditions than those who did not, and some combinations of NCDs related highest risk for a dental caries-related index. In clinical practice, dentists should provide meticulous care for dental caries in elderly patients with NCDs, especially when certain diseases, such as HT, osteoporosis, DM, and CVD, are present together.
In higher plants, gravitropism proceeds through three sequential steps in the responding organs: perception of gravity signals, signal transduction and asymmetric cell elongation. Light and ...temperature also influence the gravitropic orientation of plant organs. A series of Arabidopsis shoot gravitropism (sgr) mutants has been shown to exhibit disturbed shoot gravitropism. SGR5 is functionally distinct from other SGR members in that it mediates the early events of gravitropic responses in inflorescence stems. Here, we demonstrated that SGR5 alternative splicing produces two protein variants (SGR5α and SGR5β) in modulating the gravitropic response of inflorescence stems at high temperatures. SGR5β inhibits SGR5α function by forming non‐DNA‐binding heterodimers. Transgenic plants overexpressing SGR5β (35S:SGR5β) exhibit reduced gravitropic growth of inflorescence stems, as observed in the SGR5‐deficient sgr5‐5 mutant. Interestingly, SGR5 alternative splicing is accelerated at high temperatures, resulting in the high‐level accumulation of SGR5β transcripts. When plants were exposed to high temperatures, whereas gravitropic curvature was reduced in Col‐0 inflorescence stems, it was uninfluenced in the inflorescence stems of 35S:SGR5β transgenic plants and sgr5‐5 mutant. We propose that the thermoresponsive alternative splicing of SGR5 provides an adaptation strategy by which plants protect the shoots from hot air under high temperature stress in natural habitats.
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