Proinflammation and antiapoptosis related gene expression in carpal tunnel syndrome -- Kim et al. 48 (1002): 465P -- Society of Nuclear Medicine Annual Meeting Abstracts

I decided to concentrate on Carpal Tunnel Syndrome reports from South Korea. The reason for my curiosity is based on improved flight connections between Helsinki-Vantaa and Seoul. I wrote about that in my previous post yesterday.

Susan K.N. is also checking to find out for potential connections with ties to CTS diagnostics. South Korea has a population of 49 million people. It's one of the major economic powers and one wealthiest countries in Asia.

I need to find more background information and will bee looking for articles and research papers from places like Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Samsung Medical Centre, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea and Eulji University School of Medicine, Daejeon, South Korea.

Here is a CTS study made in South Korea.

Proinflammation and antiapoptosis related gene expression in carpal tunnel syndrome -- Kim et al. 48 (1002): 465P -- Society of Nuclear Medicine Annual Meeting Abstracts: "Objectives: Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is one of the most common disorders by under pressure of the median nerve at the wrist in these days.

However, pathological mechanism of CTS is unknown. We carried out this study to identify the changes of gene expression and to evaluate possible mechanism in CTS.


Methods: 120 CTS patients and 30 control patients were included in this study. Patients with a history of:

1. diabetes,
2. hypertension,
   
3. thyroid diseases, and
4. arthritis were excluded.
   

CTS patients were divided to three experimental groups-Mild, Moderate, and Severe group-according to elecrodiagnosis.

Helge: I guess electrodiagnosis means ENMG and / or nerve conductivity measuring (e.g. made possible by the Mediracer hand-held device.)

Radioactive cDNA microarrays (Nylon membrane including 1,152 genes) were used to examine the difference of gene expression profile in CTS..."

Helge: Here is information about the researchers involved.

Research Support (if any): We thank Dr. Yoon S. Cho-Chung (Cellular Biochemistry Section, BasicResearch Laboratory, CCR, NCI, NIH, Bethesda, MD) and Dr Kevin G Becker (DNA Array Unit, NIA, NIH, Baltimore, MD) for valuable advices on cDNA microarray. This study was partially supported by grant of the Korea Health 21 R&D Project, Ministry of Health and Welfare, R. O. K (Hmp-00-GN-01-0002 & 03-PJ10-PG13-GD01-0002). This work was partially supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) grant funded by the Korea Government (MOST) (No. R13-2003-016-03002-0 & No. M20502240001-06L0224-00111).

Information about South Korea from Wikipedia

South Korea is a major economic power and one of the wealthiest countries in Asia. It is a developed country with a high standard of living, having a trillion dollar economy that is the third largest in Asia and 13th largest in the world.


Forming the G20 industrial nations and the world's top ten exporters, it has the world's sixth largest foreign exchange reserves and is defined as a High-income economy by the World Bank, a Developed market by the FTSE Group and an Advanced economy by the IMF and CIA. South Korea and Japan are the only two OECD members in Asia.


Today, the Asian Tiger is leading the Next Eleven nations and is one of the world's fastest growing developed economies. South Korea has a very high-tech and modern infrastructure, and is a world leader in technologically advanced goods such as electronics, automobiles, ships, machinery, petrochemicals and robotics, headed by Samsung, Hyundai and LG.

Korean Teenagers To Develop Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Due To Text Messaging

Today I got an idea that we should be taking a closer look at the South Korean market. Mediracer has an office close to the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport and Finland opened a direct flight to Seoul in June 2008. We've


Korean Teenagers To Develop Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Due To Text Messaging: "Korean Teenagers To Develop Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Due To Text Messaging. Published 05/4/2007.

Tomi Charity

"Personally, I send no more than five messages a month. This is because I either chat on my laptop with people online or I ring them up for a voice call. I've never really found a need to send text messages, unless I know that the person on the other end won't be able to pick up the phone. And this is why I would never fit in if I were to move to Seoul," writes Tom Charity in Mobile Phones.

Sixty Text Messages a Day

According to a recent study, Korean teenagers aged between 15 and 19 send an average of 60.1 text messages a day. That works out to nearly 2000 text messages a month. What's more, the trend appears to be increasing, because when they got information about 2005, the average was just 59.5 messages per day. Young adults aged between 20 and 24 are less inclined to send text messages, but they still send quite a few, average 30.9 per day (22.6/day in 2005). Text messaging has become such a rampant problem in Korea that "it's not uncommon for people to develop carpal tunnel" syndrome.

• Written by Tom Charity
• Published in Mobile Phones

Helge: I came to this conclusion a few days ago when I visited the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. Olli arrived from Mexico City via Paris. The flight was a few minutes late and I'd the time to read some of the brochures and corporate magazines at the airport. Suddenly an idea struck me. Seoul isn't that far away from us. South Korea is a very industrialized nation. We import cars, electronics, mobile phones, gadgets, large screen tv-displays, components, and materials for Finnish production for 1,1 billion euros. The Finnish export to South Korea is only 600 million euros. What could we do to improve the import-export ratio? Why not export more mediracers!

Susan KN might have some ideas about how to penetrate the South Korean market. I'll write to her and ask what she thinks. We're still in the beginning. There is a need to do much more background research but the industrial structure of Korea clearly indicates that there must be a market for Mediracer.