The purpose of this study was designed to identify the health care condition aggressively to urban and semi-urban seniors and to inform the importance of prevention prior to treatment for better old age. A total of 200 seniors who were over the age of 65 and lived specific area of Seoul and Daeboo-island Ansan-city, from 7 September to 4 October 2012, and used self-developed questionnaire. The result of relevance analysis for oral health care demands shows that seniors from Ansan-city had higher dental prosthesis demands(the average 4.43) than seniors from Seoul(3.96) and the difference was statistically significant(p<0.01). Analysis of the correlation between items represented positive(+) relation in all items and same age distribution. Dental prosthesis has high correlation in every items, but fluorine treatment has low correlation relatively. Correlation between independent variables and dependent variables was slightly high, R=0.356(35.6%). However daily activity, oral heath care and anxiety times showed statistical significances. The result of this study shows that there are significant differences between urban area and semi-urban area. Therefore, authorities need to offer oral health education.

The objective of this study is investigation of contamination levels and assessment of health risk effects of heavy metals in herbal pills. 31 Items and 93 samples were obtained for this investigation from major herbal medicine producing areas, herbal markets and on-line supermarkets from Jan to Jun in 2010. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer method was conducted for the quantitative analysis of Pb, Cd and As. In addition, the mercury analyzer system was conducted for that of Hg without sample digestion. The average contents of heavy metals in samples were as follows : 0.87 mg/kg for Pb, 0.08 mg/kg for Cd, 2.87 mg/kg for As and 0.16 mg/kg for Hg, respectively. In addition, the average contents of heavy metals in different parts of plants, including cortex, fructus, herba, radix, seed, algae and others were 0.63 mg/kg, 3.94 mg/kg, 1.42 mg/kg, 1.05 mg/kg, 0.16 mg/kg, 22.31 mg/kg and 10.17 mg/kg, respectively. After the estimations of dietary exposure, the acceptable daily intake (ADI), the average daily dose (ADD), the provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) and the relative hazard of heavy metals were evaluated. As the results, the relative hazards compared to PTWI in samples were below the recommended standard of JECFA as Pb 3.1%, Cd 0.9%, Hg 0.5%. Cancer risks through slope factor (SF) by Ministry of Environment Republic Korea and Environmental Protection Agency was 4.24 × 10−7 for Pb and 3.38 × 10−4 for As (assuming that the total arsenic content was equal to the inorganic arsenic). Based on our results, possible Pb-induced cancer risks in herbal pills according to parts used including cortex, fructus, herba, radix, seed, algae and others were 1.95 × 10−7, 1.45 × 10−6, 2.14 × 10−7, 6.27 × 10−7, 1.99 × 10−8, 3.61 × 10−7 and 9.64 × 10−8, respectively. Possible As-induced cancer risks in herbal pills by parts used including cortex, fructus, herba, radix, seed, algae and others were 1.54 × 10−5, 7.24 × 10−5, 1.23 × 10−4, 2.02 × 10−5, 3.25 × 10−6, 2.18 × 10−3 and 5.67 × 10−6 respectively. Taken together, these results indicate that the majority of samples except for some samples with relative high contents of heavy metals were safe.

Saliva from the oral cavity was collected from 129 patients with periodontitis and 54 Staphylococcus aureus isolates were isolated from these samples. The S. aureus isolates were tested for their resistance patterns against 15 antibiotics using the disc diffusion method. The percentage of S. aureus isolates resistant to ampicillin was the highest (92.6%). In addition, the percentage of S. aureus isolates resistant to penicillin, oxacillin, cefotetan, cefepime and erythromycin was 90.7%, 11.1%, 11.1%, 9.3% and 5.6%, respectively. However, S. aureus isolates were susceptible to gentamycin, clindamycin, trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole and vancomycin. 96.3% of S. aureus isolates were resistant to antibiotics. Among them, the percentage of two antibiotic-resistant S. aureus isolates was 74.1%, the percentage of one antibiotic-resistant S. aureus isolates was 5.6%, the percentage of three antibiotic-resistant S. aureus isolates was 3.7% and the percentage of S. aureus isolates resistant to more than 4 antibiotics was 13%. The most common multiple antimicrobial resistance pattern was AM-P. Furthermore, the percentage of methicillin-resistant S. aureus isolates was 11.1% and they were resistant to more than 3 antibiotics.

The dental infections have been increased due to the widespread overuse and exposure to antibiotics. One of the well-known pathogens is S. aureus The pathogenic properties of S. aureus is associated with the virulence gene. The objective of this study is to investigate the distribution of virulence gene of S. aureus which may contribute to the prevention and treatment of bacterial infections. 54 strains of S. aureus were separated from saliva taken from 129 outpatients diagnosed with periodontitis from Jun. to Dec., 2010 in Seoul. 44 (46.6%) and 13 (31.7%) strains of them were obtained from 88 and 41 outpatients from the S and E dental clinics, respectively. Then, the distribution of virulence gene and genetic diversity were analyzed with the PCR technique. The result of the S. aureus isolates possessed coagulase gene and showed six polymorphism types 390~470 bp (1.8%), 550~633 bp (3.7%), 630~714 bp (9.3%), 715~795 bp (20.4%), 796~876 bp (40.7%) and 877~957 bp(22.2%) due to variable numbers of tandem repeats present within the gene. In this study it will be anticipated that this study can contribute to establish efficiently the countermeasure about the prevention and treatment of antibiotic bacterial infections.

The increase in the consumption of herb medicines have made their use a public health problem due to the potential fungal contamination and the risk of the presence of mycotoxins. 360 samples of herb medicines were evaluated for the aflatoxin contamination. The natural occurrence of aflatoxins in these samples were determined using immunoaffinity column clean up and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with post-column derivatization. For samples analyzed, mean levels (incidence) of AFB1, AFB2, AFG1 and AFG2 in positive samples were 1.4 μg/kg (46.4%), 0.4 μg/kg (25.4%), 1.1 μg/kg (37.8%) and 0.9 μg/kg (24.3%), respectively. Recoveries of the full analytical procedure were 71.7~99.7% for AFB1, 88.1~99.2% for AFB2, 82.8~95.5% for AFG1 and 77.9~90.0%for AFG2. The excess cancer risk estimated using the cancer potency of aflatoxin B1 (7 (mg/kg/day)−1 for HBsAg− and 230 (mg/kg/day)−1 for HBsAg+) were 1.30 × 10^(−5) ~ 1.22 × 10^(−7) for hepatits B surface antigen negative (HBsAg−) and 3.31 × 10^(−4)~ 3.12 × 10^(−6) for hepatits B surface antigen positive (HBsAg+) respectively. In conclusion, although the contamination levels of samples used in the study were low, further actions are also required to undertake a program of herbal surveys in order to access mycotoxin contamination overall so that the safety of public will be protected.

This study was carried out to investigate antibiotic resistances of 181 isolates in Staphylococcus aureus isolated from 450 specimens which were a General Hospital personnel in Cheonan province. Of the 181 isolates, 89 isolates (49.2%) were methicillin resistant and 92 isolates were susceptible. They were resistant to penicillin (80.1%), clindamycin (18.8%), oxacillin (49.2%), cefepime (28.2%), cefotetan (34.3%), ampicillin (66.3%), gentamicin (27.6%), tetracycline (17.7%) and erythromycine (43.1%), also. In resistant rates of the 89 MRSA, 5 antibiotics were more than 50%, but in those of the 92 MSSA, only 1 antibiotics was. Also they showed very highly multi-drug resistance patterns to 15 antibiotics as follow : One hundred and forty five isolates(82.3%) showed antibiotic resistance to more than one kind of the 15 kinds antibiotics. In the multiple resistant patterns, one drug resistant isolates were 18 isolates (9.9%), 2 drugs 29 (16.0%), 3 drugs 21 (11.6%), 4 drugs 29 (16.0%), and more than 5 drugs were 52 isolates (28.7%). The number of more than 5 drugs resistant strains in MSSA were only 1 strain, but those in MRSA were 51 isolates (57.3%). Forty five isolates (24.9%) produced enterotoxin serotype C and all MRSA.

The incidence of multidrug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus continues to increase in hospitals and the community all over the world. As the importance of miner surgery in dentistry gets greater recently, the frequency in use of antibiotics has been increasing. Although several cases of acquired infection in oral cavity in dental hospital has been reported, the research on isolation of S. aureus and evaluation of its antibiotic resistance from outpatients in the dental clinic has not been found yet. The aim of this study was to evaluate the antimicrobial resistance of S. aureus isolates. The isolation rate of S. aureus were 41.7% in dental hospital personnel, 60.4% in outpatients and 62% in dental hygiene students. S. aureus which showed resistance to penicillin were 88.6%, ampicillin 88.6%, erythromycin 8.6%, tetracycline 4.3%, oxacillin 4.3%, cefoteten 4.3%. Six strains of S. aureus showed the susceptible to all antibiotics tested. Sixty-four(91.4%) strains were multiple antibiotic resistance. Fifty-two strains(72.8%) resisted to AM-P. and Seven strains(10.0%) resisted to AM-P-E, AM-P-GM, AM-P-TE.

Most propionic acid is added to food (especially breads) as preservatives and its form is sodium or calcium salt. Most countries admitted propionic acid as food preservatives but a tolerance limit is somewhat different according to countries. Recoveries of the official method for propionates reported as 50.0~60.0%. Accordingly new rapid determination method for propionates was developed using formic acid added sodium chloride (5 g) and ether (formic acid : ether = 1 : 2) as the extraction solvent to improve the official method with the complex processes. Propionate was dissolved from the samples with formic acid omitting steam distillation and ion exchange procedure. Then propionate in formic acid was extracted with ether and sodium chloride again. A 1 μl aliquot of the filtrate of ether was analyzed by gas chromatograph. Recoveries from sample A and B fortified with propionic acid sodium salt were 85.0 % and 90.0 %, respectively.

We conducted growth inhibition tests on oral microorganisms using three strains of Lactobacillus spp. which are widely known as their probiotic properties. In these experiments, we measured the number of oral microorganisms after directly contacting lactobacillus with them. In addition, we conducted a similar study using yogurts which are well known as a p robiotic food. I n these yogurts, w e identified t he t ype o f lactobacilli by 1 6s r RN A nucleotide analysis. In o ur study, the growth of most of oral microorganisms were inhibited by lactobacilli, and we also found that yogurts had the highest effectiveness in inhibiting the growth of most of oral microorganisms. The lactobacilli contained in the yogurts were identified as Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus paracasei, Lactobacillus helveticus, Lactobacillus casei, and Lactobacillus helveticus

In order to investigate the resistance patterns and molecular characteristics of resistance gene of 9 NA-resistant Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Enteritidis, Total of 101 isolates were isolated from stool sampes from 2005 to 2006. Among them, 48 isolates(47.5%) were identified S. Enteritidis, 24 isolates(23.8%) S. Typhi, 8 isolates(42.5%) S. Typhimurium, 7 isolates(6.9%) S. Paratyphi A and 14 isolates (13.9%) others Salmonellas. All of S. Enteritidis were resistant to ampicillin(43.8%), ticarcillin(43.8%), streptomycin(37.5%), chloramphenicol(29.2%), tetracycline(10.4%) and nalidixic acid(18.8%), respectively. All nalidixic acid-resistance isolates represented one point mutation in the quinolone resistance determining region(QRDR) of gyrA gene. Among them, 8(89%) isolates were substituted Tyr for Ser at position amino acid 83th or 1(11%) isolate was substituted Asn for Asp at position amino acid 87th. In consequence, Continued surveillance of NA-resistance among non-Typhi S. entetica isolates is needed to mitigate the increasing prevalence of nalidixic acid resistance.

Our paper shows the results of 302 samples of herb medicines about fungal contamination at Yakyeang markets in Seoul. The sample medicines were treated VICAM pretreatment and analysed by post column derivatisation procedure(PHRED-HPLC) with a fluorescence detector. Aflatoxin B1 was founded from 50.3% of samples, aflatoxin B2 was 39.7%, aflatoxin G1 was 21.2% and aflatoxin G2 was 23.5%. The detected ranges of aflatoxin B1, B2, G1 and G2 were from 0.1 to 57.2 μg/kg, 0.1 to 42.6 μg/kg, 0.1 to 23.5 μg/kg and 0.1 to 9.5 μg/kg respectively. Among total samples, 26 samples contained aflatoxin B1 violated the regulation (less than 10 ug/kg) for aflatoxin B1 of KFDA. From the result, we could presumed that more than a half of samples were contaminated by aflatoxins. Therefore, it seems to be necessary that the new safety giudeline will be established aflatoxin B2, G1 and G2 from herb medicines as aflatoxin B1.