Ji Hong Kim

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Although binge drinking has been well tolerated in Chinese culture, it is strongly associated with alcohol abuse and dependence in both genders in Hong Kong. Our findings suggest that prevalence of problematic alcohol consumption warrants greater promotion of alcohol harms awareness. Higher rates of heavy drinking in younger-aged individuals may reflect changing lifestyle behaviors and herald higher future levels of alcohol-related health and social problems.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a complex autoimmune disease with multiorgan manifestations, including pleuropulmonary involvement (20-90%). The precise mechanism of pleuropulmonary involvement in SLE is not well-understood; however, systemic type 1 interferons, circulating immune complexes, and neutrophils seem to play essential roles. There are eight types of pleuropulmonary involvement: lupus pleuritis, pleural effusion, acute lupus pneumonitis, shrinking lung syndrome, interstitial lun

Autoimmune diseases are disorders that destruct or disrupt the body's own tissues by its own immune system. Several studies have revealed that polymorphisms of multiple genes are involved in autoimmune diseases. Meanwhile, gene therapy has become a promising approach in autoimmune diseases, and clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats and CRISPR-associated protein 9 (CRISPR-Cas9) has become one of the most prominent methods. It has been shown that CRISPR-Cas9 can be applied to knock o

This article briefly reviews malignant bone tumors, diffuse marrow infiltrating diseases, and other benign bone diseases with fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) uptake on positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) that should be differentiated from malignant tumors. Clinical use of FDG PET/CT in (1) primary malignant bone tumors including osteosarcoma, malignant fibrous histiocytoma, and primary bone lymphoma, (2) hematopoietic tumors with bone marrow involvement, such as plasmacytoma, mult

Hypoxia has diverse stimulatory effects on human adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs). In the present study, we investigated whether hypoxic culture conditions (2% O₂) suppress spontaneous mineralization and osteogenic differentiation of ASCs. We also investigated signaling pathways and molecular mechanisms involved in this process. We found that hypoxia suppressed spontaneous mineralization and osteogenic differentiation of ASCs, and up-regulated mRNA and protein expression of Insulin-like growth

These CNV regions can be useful to identify the pathogenic mechanisms of SLE, and might be used to more accurately predict the risk of SLE by taking into consideration their synergistic effects on disease susceptibility.

It is known that the etiology and clinical outcomes of autoimmune diseases are associated with a combination of genetic and environmental factors. In the case of the genetic factor, the SNPs of the <i>PTPN22</i> gene have shown strong associations with several diseases. The recent exploding numbers of genetic studies have made it possible to find these associations rapidly, and a variety of autoimmune diseases were found to be associated with <i>PTPN22</i> polymorphisms. Proteins encoded by <i>P