Protective effect of rhubarb combined with ulinastatin for patients with sepsis

Abstract

Background: Sepsis is the leading cause of death in critically ill patients. Ulinastatin (UTI), a protease inhibitor, and rhubarb, used as a traditional Chinese medication, are proved to be effective in treating sepsis, but the effect of the combination therapy of these two drugs on sepsis remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the effect of the combination treatment of UTI and rhubarb on sepsis patients. Methods: A total of 75 septic patients were randomly divided into control group, UTI group, Rhubarb group, and UTI plus Rhubarb group. Clinical data and score of Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) were collected; lymphocyte subtypes in the peripheral blood were analyzed before and after the 5-day treatment in the Intensive Care Unit. Results: All the therapeutic interventions (UTI alone, rhubarb alone, or UTI plus rhubarb) significantly reduced the levels of C-Reactive protein, white blood cell density, lactic acid, and APACH II scores, and elevated the levels of CD4/CD8, but only UTI plus rhubarb treatment obviously decreased the level of procalcitonin. Conclusion: This study suggested that the combination of UTI and rhubarb may be a promising therapeutic scheme to ameliorate sepsis.

Evaluation of the Clinical Efficacy of Liquid Resuscitation Combined with Ulinastatin in Patients with Sepsis

“…Although there is no difference on mortality results together with our study, our study did not report the effect of ulinastatin on the length of ICU stay. Ulinastatin combined with other inflammatory modifiers (such as thymosin α1) has proved that enhancing cell-mediated immunity can restore immune function, which is expected to reduce mortality [17] .…”

A retrospective study of ulinastatin for the treatment of severe sepsis

“…[ 25 ] During the past few years, ulinastatin is reported to treat patients with SS. [ 26 – 32 ] Although previous studies reported ulinastatin in treating patients with SS, [ 26 – 32 ] most of them involved other similar medication, and very few studies addressed the efficacy and safety of ulnastatin for the treatment of SS. In addition, there are still inconsistent results among those studies.…”

“…In addition, there are still inconsistent results among those studies. [ 26 – 32 ] Thus, there is still insufficient evidence to support ulnastatin for the treatment of patients with SS. This retrospective study aimed to appraise the efficacy and safety of ulnastatin for SS.…”

Protective Effects of Ulinastatin Combined With Thrombomodulin Against Lipopolysaccharide Induced Liver and Kidney Injury in Septic Rats

“…In previous studies, both UTI and TM have been found to have therapeutic effects on sepsis (Jiang et al 2018;Wu et al 2019;Wang et al 2019;Ashina et al 2020), and more meaningfully, a number of studies have shown that UTI combined with other drugs can effectively improve the treatment effect of sepsis (Meng et al 2020;Wang et al 2020). At present, there are many research projects on sepsis, but the research based on drug combination therapy is not su cient.…”