Biomedical subjects

J O Kim

Publications and source records attributed to J O Kim.

68 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

PubMed1987

Parental perceptions of the burden of genetic disease.

Parents who are carriers of genes that code for genetic disease face a complex decision regarding procreation. To investigate how parents perceive the potential effects of having a child with congenital defects and how such perceptions influence their reproductive decisions, 202 women accepting and 50 women rejecting amniocentesis after genetic counseling were followed in a 3-year longitudinal study. Using multiple correspondence analysis, we found that perceived burdens associated with hypothetical congenital abnormalities leading to prolonged illness or early death were considered the most serious, those related to physical handicap or facial abnormalities were perceived as least serious, while genetic defects causing mental retardation fell between. The parents were increasingly likely to accept amniocentesis the more they felt they would be unable to cope with the consequences of a genetic disease leading to prolonged illness or mental retardation (R = .23). Overall, the women who accepted amniocentesis were those who perceived the consequences of congenital malformation as most burdensome. The findings suggest that genetic counselors should not only explore parents' attitudes about specific congenital abnormalities, but also their perceptions of how they would cope with the medical and social consequences of the various genetic defects.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1985

Factors influencing maternal estimates of genetic risk.

The relationship between the objective and subjective estimates of genetic risk was studied in 202 women accepting and 50 women not accepting amniocentesis. All women were at risk of having a child with congenital anomalies either because of maternal age at pregnancy or family history of Down syndrome (DS) or other congenital anomalies. Only 28.6% of the women rejecting and 44.4% of the women accepting amniocentesis remembered correctly their objective odds. The correlations between the objective risk estimates and the subjective risk estimates were low overall (r = 0.089, p = 0.08); for women rejecting (r = 0.024, p = 0.44) or accepting (r = 0.082, p = 0.12) amniocentesis. The psychosocial and sociodemographic variables relating to either objective or subjective risk estimates were different for both groups of women. The study provides information on variables that should be taken into consideration in formulating a general theory to predict individual perceptions of genetic risk.

Adult↗

PubMed1984

Prognostic factors predicting control of chronic asthma symptoms in children receiving prophylactic bronchodilator therapy.

The factors predicting the control of asthma symptoms were studied in 312 consecutive children with chronic asthma who were receiving chronic prophylactic bronchodilator therapy. Asthma symptoms were controlled in 232 (74.4%) patients but not in 80 (25.6%) patients after 18 months of therapy. The cumulative percentage of patients in whom asthma symptoms were controlled increased with the duration of therapy. During the first 6 months of therapy, children who had a history of exacerbation of symptoms by fear stimulus or by dust had respectively an 83.3% (p = 0.0001) and a 35.4% (p = 0.003) lower rate of control of asthma symptoms than children without such a history. Similarly, children with a history of worsening asthma symptoms following ingestion of cold foods or drinks had a 71.4% (p = 0.002) lower rate of control of asthma symptoms after 6-12 months of therapy than children without such a history. Certain factors are important for predicting control of asthma symptoms at different times following the initiation of therapy and may relate to the lability of the airways to these stimuli.

Administration, Oral↗

PubMed1984

Representation of linear orders.

Two binary classification tasks were used to explore the associative structure of linear orders. In Experiment 1, college students classified English letters as targets or nontargets, the targets being consecutive letters of the alphabet. The time to reject nontargets was a decreasing function of the distance from the target set, suggesting response interference mediated by automatic associations from the target to the nontarget letters. The way in which this interference effect depended on the placement of the boundaries between the target and nontarget sets revealed the relative strengths of individual interletter associations. In Experiment 2, students were assigned novel linear orders composed of letterlike symbols and asked to classify pairs of symbols as being adjacent or nonadjacent in the assigned sequence. Reaction time was found to be a joint function of the distance between any pair of symbols and the relative positions of those symbols within the sequence. The effects of both distance and position decreased systematically over 6 days of practice with a particular order, beginning at a level typical of unfamiliar orders and converging on a level characteristic of familiar orders such as letters and digits. These results provide an empirical unification of two previously disparate sets of findings in the literature on linear orders, those concerning familiar and unfamiliar orders, and the systematic transition between the two patterns of results suggests the gradual integration of a new associative structure.

Adult↗

PubMed1976

Lysophosphatidyl choline and cataracts in uveitis.

In aqueous humor from rabbits with uveitis or after anterior chamber paracentesis, the levels of lysophosphatidyl choline (LPC) were 10.2mug/ml and 14.7mug/ml, respectively. These LPC levels induce early cataractous changes in the rabbit lens in culture. Analysis of the fatty acid composition of LPC showed that saturated fatty acids were more predominant in secondary aqueous humor than in primary aqueous humor. In vitro, natural LPC induced more pronounced gains in sodium ions and water by the lens than similar concentrations of synthetic L-alpha-lysopalmitoyl phosphatidyl choline. In contrast to prostaglandin E, the levels of LPC in aqueous humor of rabbits with uveitis are cataractogenic. Thus, LPC or its precursors, rather than prostaglandins, are involved in the production of cataracts in uveitis.

Animals↗

PubMed1976