BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Insomnia is a common complaint in adults. However, large epidemiologic studies of insomnia involving Asian populations are rarely reported. We performed an epidemiologic study of insomnia in a large Korean adult population. METHODS A total of 5,000 subjects (2,470 men and 2,530 women) were interviewed by telephone. A representative sample of subjects aged 20 to 69 years...

Focusing on complex diseases of public health significance, strategic issues regarding the on-going Korean Genome Cohort were reviewed: target size and diseases, measurements, study design issues, and followup strategy of the cohort. Considering the epidemiologic characteristics of Korean population as well as strengths and drawbacks of current research environment, we tried to tailor the exper...

Many Korean patients with transfusion-induced iron overload experience serious clinical sequelae, including organ damage, and require lifelong chelation therapy. However, due to a lack of compliance and/or unavailability of an appropriate chelator, most patients have not been treated effectively. Deferasirox (DFX), a once-daily oral iron chelator for both adult and pediatric patients with trans...

The purposes of this study were to estimate the prevalence of metabolic syndrome and to investigate the risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome in Korean workers. This is a secondary data analysis study using the data set from the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey IV. A total of 1,545 workers over 20 yr of age were included in this analysis. The prevalence of metab...

BACKGROUND Measures to address gender-specific health issues are essential due to fundamental, biological differences between the sexes. Studies have increasingly stressed the importance of customizing approaches directed at women's health issues according to stages in the female life cycle. In Korea, however, gender-specific studies on issues affecting Korean women in relation to stages in the...

INTRODUCTION In Los Angeles County, Koreans surpass all other groups with respect to liver cancer incidence and mortality. An estimated 80%-85% of all liver cancer is etiologically related to chronic hepatitis B viral infection. Hepatitis B serologic testing of adult immigrants from highly endemic areas such as Asia is recommended as the first step in the control of hepatitis B infection and as...

BACKGROUND Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) is known to affect cardio-metabolic disease risk. However, the relationship between childhood SES and metabolic syndrome (MetS) remains uncertain. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between childhood SES, as measured by maternal education and occupational status and adult-onset MetS in the Korean population. METHODS We examined the asso...

BACKGROUND Although vaccinations are critical for preventing emerging infectious diseases, scant research has been conducted on risk communication. With socio-economic characteristics, health behavior, and underlying diseases under control, we investigated associations between media use, health information-seeking behavior, health information type, and vaccination in the population. METHODS T...

Methods This study enrolled 134 adult patients who visited the allergy clinic of Severance Hospital due to their allergic symptoms related to food ingestion. Patients underwent skin prick test (SPT) with 55 allergens. Our food SPT panel included hairtail, yellow corvina, common eel, skate, squid, mackerel, anchovy, saury, octopus, chrysalis, sunflower seed, and pollock allergens prepared at our...

OBJECTIVES Although the cochlear implant (CI) is successful for understanding speech in patients with severe to profound hearing loss, listening to music is a challenging task to most CI listeners. The purpose of this study was to assess music perception ability and to provide clinically useful information regarding CI rehabilitation. METHODS Ten normal hearing and ten CI listeners with impla...