Background
The Korean Society of Hypertension has published the Korea Hypertension Fact Sheet 2020 to provide an overview of the magnitude and management status of hypertension and their recent trends.
Methods
The Fact Sheets were based on the analyses of Korean adults aged 20 years or older of the 2007–2018 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) and the 2002–2018 National Health Insurance Big Data (NHI-BD).
Results
Currently, the population average of systolic/diastolic blood pressure was 118/76 mmHg in Korean adults aged 20 years or older showing little change in the recent decade. However, the number of people with hypertension increased steadily, exceeding 12.0 million. Indeed, the number of people diagnosed with hypertension increased from 3.0 million in 2002 to 9.7 million in 2018. During the same period, the number of people using antihypertensive medication increased from 2.5 million to 9.0 million, and the number of people adherent to treatment increased from 0.6 million to 6.5 million. Hypertension awareness, treatment, and control rates increased rapidly until 2007, but showed plateaued thereafter. In 2018, the awareness, treatment, and control rates of hypertension among all adults were 67, 63, and 47%, respectively. However, the awareness and treatment rates were only 17 and 14% among adults aged 20 to 39 years old with hypertension. Among patients treated for hypertension, 61% of them were also using glucose-lowering or lipid-lowering drugs. Among antihypertensive prescriptions, 41% of the patients received monotherapy, 43% received dual therapy, and 16% received triple or more therapy. The most commonly prescribed antihypertensive medication was angiotensin receptor blockers, followed by calcium channel blockers and diuretics.
Conclusion
To achieve further improvement in management of hypertension, we need to encourage awareness and treatment in young adults. It is required to develop tailored prevention and management strategies that are appropriate for and inclusive of various demographics.
Intravenous administration
of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) has
served as a clinical intervention for inflammatory diseases. Once
entered to blood circulation, MSCs are exposed to a harsh environment
which sharply decreases cell viability due to the fact that injected
cells, being susceptible to shear stress, are subjected to the high
velocities of the bloodstream and lack of proper mechanical support
that keeping them in an attachment-deprived state. Here, we coated the nanofilm onto viable
MSCs by depositing poly-l-lysine and hyaluronic acid molecules
along with arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD peptide) as building
blocks to protect cells from shear stress and stabilize them in a
single cell, suspension state. In this article, we found that nanofilm-coated
cells showed significantly increased cell survival in vitro and in vivo, which was also supported by the activation
of survival-related protein, Akt. The coated nanofilm did not interfere
with the stemness of MSCs which was determined based on the colony
forming unit-fibroblast (CFU-F) assay and in vitro differentiation potential. Because of the characteristics of films
showing light molecular deposition density, flexibility, and looseness,
application of nanofilms did not block cell migration. When the cells
were administrated intravenously, the nanofilm coated MSCs not only
prolonged blood circulation lifetime but also showed increased stem
cell recruitment to injured tissues in the muscle injury in
vivo model, due to prolonged survival. Surface modification
of MSCs using nanofilms successfully modulated cell activity enabling
them to survive the anoikis-inducing state, and this can provide a
valuable tool to potentiate the efficacy of MSCs for in vivo cell therapy.
The ability to control drug loading and release is the most important feature in the development of medical devices. In this research, we prepared a functional nanocoating technology to incorporate a drug-release layer onto a desired substrate. The multilayer films were prepared using chitosan (CHI) and carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) polysaccharides by the layer-by-layer (LbL) method. By using chemical cross-linking to change the inner structure of the assembled multilayer, we could control the extent of drug loading and release. The cross-linked multilayer film had a porous structure and enhanced water wettability. Interestingly, more of the small-molecule drug was loaded into and released from the non-cross-linked multilayer film, whereas more of the macromolecular drug was loaded into and released from the cross-linked multilayer film. These results indicate that drug loading and release can be easily controlled according to the molecular weight of the desired drug by changing the structure of the film.
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