The Road Less Traveled

As I look down the hill through the editorial office’s window, I notice a sprout developing on a pine tree blooming nearby. I then pat myself on the back thinking of the last 3 months I have gone through. It was snowing when I first began the managing editorship for Osong Public Health and Research Perspectives. The first issue has already been published, with its glossy cover now reflecting in the sunshine. This is a crystal of pains of scientists in this ‘five-pine’, or Osong techno-polis.

As we grow older, we discover that what seemed at one time an absorbing interest, was in reality a passion that had swept over us before passing on. Finally, we come to realize that our life has no more continuity than a rock-pool filled by a crashing wave before it is then emptied. This journal might be nothing more than another passion of mine when I consider it in retrospect sometime in the future. But I would also like to say that I have taken the less traveled path of two roads diverging in the woods, and that has made all the difference.

As I calculate the chance of radioactive fall-out from our neighboring country’s Fukushima nuclear plants in this weekend’s rain, I am also looking at the corrected manuscripts for this issue on my desk, simultaneously dialing the numbers for authors who have yet to submit a revised article. As our journal aims and scope reveal, this issue covers the full spectrum of epidemiological research, basic and applied disease-related research, a national survey, and a cohort study.

In this issue, we discover that cottons rats can be used for the study of influenza virus pathogenesis for human influenza A (H1N1) [1], and the differences in phenotypic susceptibility assays between Korean highly active anti-retroviral therapy-experienced HIV-1 infected and highly active anti-retroviral therapy-naïve patients [2]. Lyme borreliosis is also described in Korea [3]. Furthermore, we see that hepatitis E was more prevalent in rural areas than urban areas (odds ratio 3.22, 95% confidence interval: 1.46–7.10) based on a national survey [4], and the first serological evidence for dengue type 1 virus was identified among Koreans who had traveled to endemic areas [5].

Two interesting approaches to Vibrio vulnificus infections in Korea are described. Molecular characterization was conducted for V. vulnificus isolates in the laboratory [6], whereas a mathematical model was also developed for the estimation and prediction of the incidence of disease and its relationship with seawater temperature [7].

This issue also reports a surveillance study that indicated the existence of high resistance to the antibiotics most frequently prescribed for diarrhea in isolates from diarrheal patients [8]. In a school children cohort study, two distinctive dietary patterns (Western and Korean diets) were found to be closely related to dietary quality, which in turn are related to health risks, which could further be helpful in designing nutrition policy and intervention programs for children [9]. Furthermore, the mean incubation period of the Ebola outbreak (subtype Zaire) in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1995 was estimated to be 12.7 days (standard deviation 4.31 days), far less than in previous studies (25 days) [10], whereas a plan of action is summarized as a guide for key actions taken if poliovirus outbreak occurs in Korea [11].