2021, Vol.34, No.2

Anatomy & Biological Anthropology 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.33

pISSN : 2671-5651 / eISSN : 2671-566X
https://journal.kci.go.kr/aba

Dissections for medical education have been performed with one donated and died unclaimed. Recently, ‘The Revised Act of Corpse Dissection and Preservation’ prohibited the use of the unclaimed dead bodies for the dissection. Trends in body donation have been rarely analyzed in spite of the changed bioethical and legal environment. We aimed to compare the demographic characteristics such as age, sex, the place and causes of death, and others on 594 registrants and 140 cadaver donors at Jeju National University Medical School database from 1996 to 2020. There was a ratio of 60.4% male to 39.6% female in registrants, and 72.9% male to 27.1% female in donors. The age was sixties 34.3%, fifties 26.1%, and seventies 19.7% in registrants, and seventies 22.9%, fifties 17.1%, sixties 17.1%, and eighties 16.4% in donors. The proportion of the registrants who donated their bodies was 8.9% until now, and the registrants was 37.1% among the cadaver donors. The cause of death of donors were the neoplasms with 38.6%, the diseases of the respiratory system with 11.4%, the diseases of the digestive diseases and injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes with 9.3%, respectively. The place of death of donors was the highest in hospital (68.6%). These results could be practiced as important basic data base for the body donation program. We think that the national facilities or management system might be necessary in order to maintain the donation of the human bodies required for medical education and research.

Due to the sudden spread of COVID-19 in 2020, it was difficult to conduct lectures at medical schools. Accordingly, many medical colleges conducted anatomy practice according to the current situation and quarantine regulations in the region or conducted lectures instead of practice. Therefore, in this study, students’ responses were investigated for anxiety for infection and lecture satisfaction according to various practice methods. A total of 314 medical school students participated in the questionnaire, and 222 students performed anatomy practice, with the division (56%) or shortened class time (54%). In the cases that the practice was not conducted, it was postponed (50%) or skipped (28%), which was replaced by online lectures. In this case, lectures were provided through faculty lectures (43%) or E-Anatomy (35%) produced by the Korean Association of Anatomists. With 5-point Likert scale, the anxiety for infection during practice was low as 2.20±1.11, and did not differ depending on the division or grade. Satisfaction with the practice was 3.93±1.06, which was higher in medical students than in premedical students. This study shows that online lectures, which were mainly conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic era, must be properly conducted in anatomy practice in order to have an anatomy learning effect.

Despite studies on the anti-inflammatory effect of Fructus amomi, mature fruit of Amomum villosum Lour, have been getting increasing extensively, it remains unknown about the detailed effects of F. amomi on ovalbumin (OVA)-induced mouse asthma model. In this study, we examined the effect of F. amomi on OVA-induced asthma by analyzing Th1/Th2 cytokine production, histopathologic changes, and focusing on the NF-κB signaling. Oral administration of F. amomi reduced the number of inflammatory cells especially eosinophils and improved airway and pulmonary inflammation in the lungs of OVA-challenged mice. In addition, F. amomi significantly downregulated the overproduction of tumor necrosis factor-α, IL-1β, IL-4, IL-5 and the levels of OVA-specific both IgE and IgG1 and increased the secretion of interferon-γ and OVA-specific IgG2a. Moreover, F. amomi suppressed the increase of total NF-κB level and the phosphorylation of IκB-α and NF-κB by OVA. F. amomi may have therapeutic effect for allergic asthma by modulating Th1/Th2 cytokine imbalance and inhibiting NF-κB signaling activation.