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Although radiotherapy (RT) is used for the treatment of cancers, including liver cancer, radiation-induced liver disease (RILD) has emerged as a major limitation of RT. Radiation-induced toxicities in nontumorous liver tissues are associated with the development of numerous symptoms that may limit the course of therapy or have serious chronic side effects, including late fibrosis. Although the clinical characteristics of RILD patients have been relatively well described, the understanding of RILD pathogenesis has been hampered by a lack of reliable animal models for RILD. Despite efforts to develop suitable experimental animal models for RILD, current animal models rarely present hepatic veno-occlusive disease, the pathological hallmark of human RILD patients, resulting in highly variable results in RILD-related studies. Therefore, we introduce the concept and clinical characteristics of RILD and propose a feasible explanation for RILD pathogenesis. In addition, currently available animal models of RILD are reviewed, focusing on similarities with human RILD and clues to understanding the mechanisms of RILD progression. Based on these findings from RILD research, we present potential therapeutic strategies for RILD and prospects for future RILD studies. Therefore, this review helps broaden our understanding for developing effective treatment strategies for RILD. Radiotherapy: Animal models needed for radiation-induced liver disease Radiation-induced liver disease (RILD) remains poorly understood and treated because of the lack of suitable animal models. There are no effective treatments for liver cancer patients who experience this life-threatening complication of radiotherapy, partly because the precise mechanisms of disease development remain largely unknown. In a review article, Jieun Kim and Youngmi Jung from Pusan National University, South Korea, describe the insights into RILD pathology that have come from clinical observations and patient-derived tissue samples. The researchers describe existing mouse, rat, rabbit, dog and monkey models for RILD, but these animals rarely develop obstructed small veins in the liver, the hallmark symptom of the human disease. Animal models that more closely mirror human RILD, the authors argue, should reveal new insights into disease mechanisms and provide a pre-clinical platform for drug screening.

Autophagy is a catabolic process for unnecessary or dysfunctional cytoplasmic contents by lysosomal degradation pathways. Autophagy is implicated in various biological processes such as programmed cell death, stress responses, elimination of damaged organelles and development. The role of autophagy as a crucial mediator has been clarified and expanded in the pathological response to redox signalling. Autophagy is a major sensor of the redox signalling. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are highly reactive molecules that are generated as by-products of cellular metabolism, principally by mitochondria. Mitochondrial ROS (mROS) are beneficial or detrimental to cells depending on their concentration and location. mROS function as redox messengers in intracellular signalling at physiologically low level, whereas excessive production of mROS causes oxidative damage to cellular constituents and thus incurs cell death. Hence, the balance of autophagy-related stress adaptation and cell death is important to comprehend redox signalling-related pathogenesis. In this review, we attempt to provide an overview the basic mechanism and function of autophagy in the context of response to oxidative stress and redox signalling in pathology.

This paper proposes facial expression recognition (FER) with the wild data set. In particular, this paper chiefly deals with two issues, occlusion and intra-similarity problems. The attention mechanism enables one to use the most relevant areas of facial images for specific expressions, and the triplet loss function solves the intra-similarity problem that sometimes fails to aggregate the same expression from different faces and vice versa. The proposed approach for the FER is robust to occlusion, and it uses a spatial transformer network (STN) with an attention mechanism to utilize specific facial region that dominantly contributes (or that is the most relevant) to particular facial expressions, e.g., anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. In addition, the STN model is connected to the triplet loss function to improve the recognition rate which outperforms the existing approaches that employ cross-entropy or other approaches using only deep neural networks or classical methods. The triplet loss module alleviates limitations of the intra-similarity problem, leading to further improvement of the classification. Experimental results are provided to substantiate the proposed approach for FER, and the result outperforms the recognition rate in more practical cases, e.g., occlusion. The quantitative result provides FER results with more than 2.09% higher accuracy compared to the existing FER results in CK+ data sets and 0.48% higher than the accuracy of the results with the modified ResNet model in the FER2013 data set.

Repeated exposure to traumatic experiences may put professional firefighters at increased risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To date, however, the rate of PTSD symptoms, unmet need for mental health treatment, and barriers to treatment have only been investigated in subsamples rather than the total population of firefighters. We conducted a nationwide, total population-based survey of all currently employed South Korean firefighters (n = 39,562). The overall response rate was 93.8% (n = 37,093), with 68.0% (n = 26,887) complete responses for all variables. The rate of current probable PTSD was estimated as 5.4%. Among those with current probable PTSD (n = 1,995), only a small proportion (9.7%) had received mental health treatment during the past month. For those who had not received treatment, perceived barriers of accessibility to treatment (29.3%) and concerns about potential stigma (33.8%) were reasons for not receiving treatment. Although those with higher PTSD symptom severity and functional impairment were more likely to seek treatment, greater symptom severity and functional impairment were most strongly associated with increased concerns about potential stigma. This nationwide study points to the need for new approaches to promote access to mental health treatment in professional firefighters.

We analyzed reports for 59,073 contacts of 5,706 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) index patients reported in South Korea during January 20-March 27, 2020. Of 10,592 household contacts, 11.8% had COVID-19. Of 48,481 nonhousehold contacts, 1.9% had COVID-19. Use of personal protective measures and social distancing reduces the likelihood of transmission.

Background The high prevalence of underweight individuals is an important issue that has become increasingly common. Therefore, this study investigated the association between body mass index (BMI) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among Korean older adults using a nationwide population-based survey. Methods Data from the 2021 Community Health Survey were used for this study. The study population was a total of 70,700 respondents. HRQoL was assessed using the EuroQoL health-related quality of life scale. Multiple logistic regression was applied to analyze the ORs for moderate or severe problems in the five EQ-5D dimensions. In addition, we performed multiple linear regression to identify the association between the total EQ-5D score and BMI after adjusting for age, marital status, income, education, health behaviors, and the presence of diabetes or hypertension. Results Of the participants, 4.3% were underweight (3.3% of men and 5.1% of women). Being underweight is associated with poor HRQoL in both men and women. The relationship between obesity and HRQoL varied by sex. Men with pre-obesity and obesity were less likely to have “moderate or severe” problems in all EQ-5D dimensions, excluding mobility. However, women with obesity were more likely to have “moderate or severe” problems across EQ-5D dimensions, excluding anxiety/depression. Conclusions Being underweight is associated with poor HRQoL among Korean older adults. Policy attention must be directed toward maintaining proper weight and promoting nutritional health at older ages, given that the number of older adults is expected to continue to increase.

Web 3.0 transforms data ownership by empowering users to monetize their personal information, yet this shift amplifies complex privacy challenges. Understanding the features influencing data-sharing decisions in this evolving context aligns with the proactive philosophy of designing legal frameworks that anticipate and mitigate conflicts. This study leverages explainable AI (XAI) to analyze user privacy behaviors and other privacy attributes, using data from 682 individuals in Korea within a personalized app scenario. The findings reveal a privacy paradox: users with low perceived data value but high privacy concerns often share their data, whereas those with higher trust in services are more hesitant, prioritizing long-term privacy and service continuity. These insights demonstrate that a one-size-fits-all legal or regulatory approach cannot adequately address the nuances of Web 3.0 data-sharing dynamics. Instead, this study advocates for a proactive law framework that integrates user research and XAI insights to anticipate conflicts and opportunities. By understanding individual intentions and concerns, proactive law can deliver tailored, context-sensitive solutions that balance privacy, user autonomy and economic opportunity, ensuring equitable and sustainable outcomes in the decentralized Web 3.0 ecosystem.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) caused by fat accumulation in the liver is globally the most common cause of chronic liver disease. Simple steatosis can progress to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a more severe form of NAFLD. The most potent driver for NASH is hepatocyte death induced by lipotoxicity, which triggers inflammation and fibrosis, leading to cirrhosis and/or liver cancer. Despite the significant burden of NAFLD, there is no therapy for NAFLD/NASH. Accumulating evidence indicates gender-related NAFLD progression. A higher incidence of NAFLD is found in men and postmenopausal women than premenopausal women, and the experimental results, showing protective actions of estradiol in liver diseases, suggest that estrogen, as the main female hormone, is associated with the progression of NAFLD/NASH. However, the mechanism explaining the functions of estrogen in NAFLD remains unclear because of the lack of reliable animal models for NASH, the imbalance between the sexes in animal experiments, and subsequent insufficient results. Herein, we reviewed the pathogenesis of NAFLD/NASH focused on gender and proposed a feasible association of estradiol with NAFLD/NASH based on the findings reported thus far. This review would help to expand our knowledge of the gender differences in NAFLD and for developing gender-based treatment strategies for NAFLD/NASH.

Background The identification of genes that vary across spatial domains in tissues and cells is an essential step for spatial transcriptomics data analysis. Given the critical role it serves for downstream data interpretations, various methods for detecting spatially variable genes (SVGs) have been proposed. However, the lack of benchmarking complicates the selection of a suitable method. Results Here we systematically evaluate a panel of popular SVG detection methods on a large collection of spatial transcriptomics datasets, covering various tissue types, biotechnologies, and spatial resolutions. We address questions including whether different methods select a similar set of SVGs, how reliable is the reported statistical significance from each method, how accurate and robust is each method in terms of SVG detection, and how well the selected SVGs perform in downstream applications such as clustering of spatial domains. Besides these, practical considerations such as computational time and memory usage are also crucial for deciding which method to use. Conclusions Our study evaluates the performance of each method from multiple aspects and highlights the discrepancy among different methods when calling statistically significant SVGs across diverse datasets. Overall, our work provides useful considerations for choosing methods for identifying SVGs and serves as a key reference for the future development of related methods.

ObjectiveTransmissibility of COVID-19 by children in the household is not clear. Herein, we describe children’s role in household transmission of COVID-19.Design and settingAll paediatric COVID-19 index cases and their household members reported from 20 January to 6 April 2020 in South Korea were reviewed. The secondary attack rate (SAR) from child index case to household secondary case was calculated. Epidemiological and clinical findings of child index case-household secondary case pair was assessed.ResultsA total of 107 paediatric COVID-19 index cases and 248 of their household members were identified. One pair of paediatric index-secondary household case was identified, giving a household SAR of 0.5% (95% CI 0.0% to 2.6%). The index case was self-quarantined at home after international travel, stayed in her room, but shared a meal table with the secondary case.ConclusionThe SAR from children to household members was low in the setting of social distancing, underscoring the importance of rigorous contact tracing and early isolation in limiting transmission within households.