Bronchial artery infusion therapy has been performed in a total of 27 patients by a selective catheterization technique chiefly as surgical adjuvant chemotherapy. A major antitumor agent chosen for this study was Mitomycin C.
There was apparent tumor regression on the chest roentgenograms in 14 of 27 cases. The extent of tumor shrinkage ranged from 75% at maximum to 36% at minimum in 2 dimensional measurements on the x‐ray films. The patients were treated 1 to 4 times in a period of 2 days to 2 weeks. Observation periods after final infusion were limited to the term of preoperation. Subjective complaints were improved by the treatment. No serious side effects and very few complications were experienced. The authors would like to point out that the extent of tumor shrinkage may be related to the frequency of the infusion, and distant survival rate seemed to be better with the patients who received cancer resection after having recurrent infusion than with the patients having only one infusion.
The inhibitory activity of T cells on autologous erythroid colony-forming units (CFU-E) (T cell inhibitory activity) in patients with aplastic anaemia (AA) was investigated. In 11 (32.4%) out of 34 AA cases, T cell inhibition on autologous CFU-E growth was greater than that in normal individuals. In order to evaluate the mechanism of this inhibitory activity, T cell surface markers, interferon (IFN) production in peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMNC) liquid culture, and cytokine levels such as IFN and tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) in CFU-E clot cocultured with T cells, were measured in a portion of the patients. In five patients investigated for IFN production in PBMNC liquid culture, all produced statistically more IFN activity than normal individuals under phytohaemagglutinin (PHA-P) stimulation (P less than 0.01) with no relation to T cell inhibitory activity. In only one patient whose T cells displayed increased CD8 and HLA-DR antigen (CD8+HLA-DR+) and inhibitory activity, a significant amount of IFN-gamma was observed in CFU-E clot cocultured with T cells, and the addition of anti-IFN-gamma antibody to the coculture resulted in recovered CFU-E colony growth. These results suggest that IFN-gamma production by T cells may explain, at least in part, the pathogenesis of haematopoietic defects in AA. In other patients however, T cell inhibitory activity neither correlated to the T cell subpopulations (CD4+/CD8+, CD8+HLA-DR+), IFN production in PBMNC liquid culture, nor to IFN and TNF-alpha levels in CFU-E clot culture. The roles played by cytokines other than IFN and TNF-alpha on haematopoietic precursor cells require further evaluation in a larger sample of patients with AA.
A 32-year-old woman presented with Castleman's disease associated with intestinal amyloidosis. The association ofamyloidosis and Castleman's disease is very rare, with only 15 cases reported in the literature. To our knowledge, this is the second case in which persistent diarrhea and malnutrition led to the patient's death.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.