Five Months Follow-up Study of School-based Crisis Intervention for Korean High School Students Who Experienced a Peer Suicide.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to examine post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and complicated grief in Korean high school students who experienced a peer suicide. METHODS: A total of 956 students were included in the statistical analysis. One week after a peer suicide, a school-based crisis intervention program was conducted. The cohort was followed-up at one week and five months after a peer suicide. The program consists of screening tests, educational sessions, and further interview with psychiatric specialists for the selected group. Screening tests were conducted for all students to measure the Child Report of Post-traumatic Symptoms (CROPS), the post-traumatic stress symptoms (The University of California at Los Angeles post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] reaction index; UCLA-PTSD-RI), the anxiety symptoms (The Korean-Beck Anxiety Inventory; K-BAI), the depressive symptoms (The Korean-Beck Depression Inventory-II; K-BDI-II), and the complicated grief reaction (The Inventory of Complicated Grief; ICG). For statistical analysis, the SPSS Statistics 21.0 program was used. RESULTS: At baseline and five months follow-ups, 8.6% and 2.9% of the students showed post-traumatic stress symptoms. At five months follow-up, there was a statistically significant decline in the post-traumatic stress symptoms, anxiety, depression, and complicated grief among the 'trauma group.' A higher proportion of the female students showed post-traumatic stress symptoms after the incident of peer suicide than the male students. CONCLUSION: School-based crisis intervention helps improvement of trauma-related symptoms. It might be an effective way to prevent suicide spreading among students by alleviating trauma-related symptoms.

Mantidis Oötheca (mantis egg case) original species identification via morphological analysis and DNA barcoding.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Mantidis Oötheca (mantis egg case; sangpiaoxiao) is a medicine from an insect source, which has been widely used in Asian countries. However, misidentification due to a lack of information given variations in the medicinal portion of the ootheca and morphological similarities of the ootheca as an egg chamber. AIM OF THE STUDY: Thus, this study aims to provide the first comprehensive data for discriminating authentic of Mantidis Oötheca. Here, we provide detailed ootheca morphology and their molecular information to accurately identify Mantidis Oötheca. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Oothecae of Tenodera angustipennis (Saussure, 1869), Tenodera sinensis (Saussure, 1871), Hierodula patellifera Serville, 1839, and Hierodula sp. were used in the comparative morphological, principal component analysis, and DNA barcoding. RESULTS: The morphological analyses revealed that the emergence area, outline, angle of distal end, width of air-filled layer, and weight are useful diagnostic characters. Using these quantitative and qualitative characteristics, we developed the effective identification key. Furthermore, our CO1 sequences from all individuals were monophyletic with high bootstrap values at genus and species levels. Moreover, morphological identification using our developed key among all studied individuals agreed with molecular identification results using CO1 barcoding data. CONCLUSIONS: These multilateral approaches, including morphological, statistical, and DNA barcoding methods are highly reliable identification tools. Moreover, our diagnostic key characteristics and molecular barcoding should aid in the accurate identification, authentication, and quality control of Mantidis Oötheca medicinal materials.

Comparative Morphological, Ultrastructural, and Molecular Studies of Four Cicadinae Species Using Exuvial Legs.

Previous studies have suggested that exuviae can be used for the identification of cicada species, but the precise characteristics that differ among species have not been determined. Thus, we performed the first comparative analyses of the leg morphology, ultrastructure, and mitochondrial DNA sequences of exuviae of four dominant cicada species in Korea, Hyalessa maculaticollis (Motschulsky, 1866), Meimuna opalifera (Walker, 1850), Platypleura kaempferi (Fabricius, 1794) and Cryptotympana atrata (Fabricius, 1775), the source of Cicadidae Periostracum, a well-known traditional medicine. A morphological analysis revealed that the profemur length, femoral tooth angle, and distance between the intermediate and last tooth of the femoral comb are useful characteristics for identification. We also evaluated the usefulness of the size, degree of reflex, and number of spines on the mid-legs and hind legs as diagnostic features. An ultrastructural study showed that Meimuna opalifera has a unique surface pattern on the legs. The sequences obtained using exuviae were identical to previously obtained sequences for adult tissues. Moreover, in a phylogenetic analysis using CO1 sequences, each species formed a monophyletic cluster with high bootstrap support. Accordingly, multiple methodological approaches using exuviae might provide highly reliable identification tools. The integrative data provide useful characteristics for the exuviae-based identification of closely related species and for further taxonomic and systematic studies of Cicadinae.