ABSTRACT
Ginseng has been used as a herb medicine and a vital-additive drug for a long time, and recently its compositions and its pharmacologic actions have been studied scientifically. Particularly, since the initial reports suggesting that ginseng has an anticancer effect, there have been many other studies of this anticancer effect and its mechanisms. The anticancer effect of ginseng is explainable by two mechanisms: the direct cancer-cell-killing effect and reinforcement of the immune function of the host. The authors performed long-term administration of ginseng to patients with gastric cancer who had undergone curative surgery, observed the subjective symptoms, immune status, and nutritional status, and thereby analyzed the clinical anticancer effect of ginseng. The authors randomly selected 39 patients from among the patients with curative operations for gastric cancer. We divided the patients into two groups: 20 patients formed the study group and were administered red ginseng powder with a dose of 5400 mg per day in the form of capsules for two years postoperatively, and 19 patients formed the control group on which only follow-up was done. All the patients received postoperative adjuvant immunochemotherapy. The authors compared the preoperative and postoperative changes in appetite, the body weight to height ratio, the triceps skinfold thickness, the serum protein, the albumin and transferrin levels, the percentage of lymphocytes and the T-cell percentage in peripheral blood to examine the effect of ginseng on the subjective symptoms, as well as on the immune and the nutritional status. Although our data does not show that the long-term administration of ginseng to gastric cancer patients with curative resections improved the nutritional status, it does suggest that it improved the patients' subjective symptoms and immune functions and prevented postoperative recurrences.
Subject(s)
Humans , Appetite , Body Weight , Capsules , Follow-Up Studies , Lymphocytes , Nutritional Status , Panax , Pharmacologic Actions , Recurrence , Skinfold Thickness , Stomach Neoplasms , T-Lymphocytes , TransferrinABSTRACT
The gallstones from one hundred consecutive patients having stones in the gallbladder only were analyzed using both gross appearance and infrared spectrophotometry. There were 47 males and 53 females, and the sex ratio was 1:1.13. The most prevalent age was in the fifties in both sexes. Grossly, the number (and also the percentage) of cases of pure cholesterol, mixed cholesterol, calcium bilirubinate, black pigment, and combination stones were 4, 42, 23, 30, and 1, respectively. In the analysis by infrared spectrophotometry, the number of cases of cholesterol, calcium bilirubinate, and calcium carbonate stones were 44, 42, and 14, respectively. The accordance of gross appearance with infrared spectrophotometric classification was statistically significant (p=0.049). A comparison of cholesterol stones with pigment stones showed no difference based on either the sex or the age distribution, but there was a significant difference not only in terms of color, shape, and cut-surface (p=0.000) but also in terms of the number of stones (p=0.045). In conclusion, gallstone classification by gross appearance may be a rapid and relatively accurate method. Further study to standardize gallstone classification by various analytic methods is recommanded.
Subject(s)
Female , Humans , Male , Age Distribution , Bilirubin , Calcium Carbonate , Cholesterol , Classification , Gallbladder , Gallstones , Sex Ratio , Spectrophotometry, InfraredABSTRACT
Oncogenes are known to be involved in normal cellular growth and proliferation as well as in carcinogenesis. It is reported that stimulation of quiescent cells with growth factors makes the oncogenes produce protein products as an early and immediate response, and these protein products induce or control the cell growth. Among those oncogenes, c-fos and c-myc are well known for its generalized expressions. An experiment was performed in order to prove the hypothesis that oncogene expressions would have the same pattern with that of cellular growth by growth factors in cultured normal rat thyroid cell line(FRTL-5). Ribonucleic acids of FRTL-5 cells were extracted time-sequentially at 15, 30, 60 and 120 minutes after administration of growth factors to the media of quiescent FRTL-5 cells. Extracted ribonucleic acids were blotted to the nitrocellulose membrane, and then hybridized with radiolabelled c-fos and c-myc oligonucleotide probes, and -actin probes. Hybridized dot blots on nitrocellulose membrane were autoradiographed on X-ray films, and the amount of radioactivity were measured by densitometry. Densitometric readings were used as the indices of oncogene expressions. The concentrations of TSH, IGF-I and IgG from patients with Graves' disease, which showed the maximum expressions of c-fos and c-myc in quiescent FRTL-5 cells, were TSH 10 mU/ml, IGF-I 100 ng/ml and IgG from patients with Graves' disease 1 mg/ml, respectively. Expressions of c-fos and c-myc were more prominent in combined administrations of TSH and IGF-I, or IgG from patients with Graves' disease and IGF-I than in case of TSH and IgG from patients with Graves' disease. IgG from patients with primary myxedema suppressed oncogene expressions provoked by TSH or IgG from patients with Graves' disease, but not by IGF-I. Expressions of c-fos and c-myc were more prominent by the combined administration of TSH with TPA which stimulated the phosphoinositide turnover-protein kinase C-calcium system than by those of TSH with dBcAMP, forskolin, IBMX or cholera toxin which stimulated adenylate cyclase system. From the above results, following conclusions were obtained. 1) Expressions of c-fos and c-myc by growth factors have similar patterns with those of cell growth by growth factors in FRTL-5 cells. 2) It is suggested that the actions of TSH and IgG from patients with Graves' disease would be manifested through the same signal transduction system, and that of IGF-I would be manifested through its own, but the oncogenes would be expressed mainly through adenylate cyclase system.