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Background. Paramedic students frequently face various stressful and challenging situations as they work in emergency medical settings. Currently, research studies on utilizing meditation courses as a part of the curriculum to improve the mental health of paramedic students in Korea are lacking. Methods. For this quasiexperimental study, a nonequivalent group pretest and post-test research design was used. The study sample comprised 55 paramedic students from two similar-sized universities in different locations: 27 in the experimental group and 28 in the control group. The experimental group participated in an eight-week meditation course, while the control group did not receive any interventions during the same time period. Results. The results indicated that compared with the control group, the experimental group had significantly decreased anxiety (p=0.047) and stress levels (p=0.044) and improved sleep quality (p=0.041). The change in depression levels did not significantly differ between the groups (p=0.419). Conclusions. The inclusion of a meditation course within college curriculums for paramedic students is feasible and may benefit students in terms of stress, anxiety, and sleep quality., Author(s): Yang Gyeong Yoo [1]; MiRa Yun (corresponding author) [2]; In-Soo Lee [3]; Hyeyoung Kim [4]; Sang Gyun Roh [5]; Boas Yu [6] 1. Introduction College students face various stressful [...]

Background Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) cause infectious diarrhea and diarrheal death. However, the genetic properties of pathogenic strains vary spatially and temporally, making prevention and treatment difficult. In this study, the genomic features of the major type of ETEC in Korea from 2003 to 2011 were examined by whole-genome sequencing of strain NCCP15740, and a comparative genomic analysis was performed with O6 reference strains. Results The assembled genome size of NCCP15740 was 4,795,873 bp with 50.54% G+C content. Using rapid annotation using subsystem technology analysis, we predicted 4492 ORFs and 17 RNA genes. NCCP15740 was investigated for enterotoxin genes, colonization factor (CF) genes, serotype, multilocus sequence typing (MLST) profiles, and classical and nonclassical virulence factors. NCCP15740 belonged to the O6:H16 serotype and possessed enterotoxin genes encoding heat-stable toxin (STh) and heat-labile toxin (LT); 87.5% of the O6 serotype strains possessed both toxin types. NCCP15740 carried the colonization factors CS2 and CS3, whereas most O6 strains carried CS2-CS3-CS21 (79.2%). NCCP15740 harbored fewer virulence factors (59.4%) than the average observed in other O6 strains (62.0%). Interestingly, NCCP15740 did not harbor any nonclassical virulence genes. Conclusions The major type of ETEC in Korea had the same MLST sequence type as that of isolates from the USA obtained in 2011 and 2014, but had different colonization factor types and virulence profiles. These results provide important information for the development of an ETEC vaccine candidate. Keywords: Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli O6, Whole-genome sequencing, Colonization factor genes, Enterotoxin, Multilocus sequence typing, Virulence, Author(s): Taesoo Kwon[sup.1] , Si-yun Chung[sup.1] , Young-Hee Jung[sup.2] , Su-Jin Jung[sup.3] , Sang-Gyun Roh[sup.4] , Je-Seop Park[sup.5] , Cheorl-Ho Kim[sup.6] , Won Kim[sup.1] , Young-Seok Bak[sup.4] and Seung-Hak Cho[sup.7] [...]