[Experience with kipferon use in the treatment of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis]

Kipferon that is a combination of recombinant human (2-interferon and a complex of immunoglobulins G, M and A, was used in suppositories as an auxiliary agent in the routine chemotherapy in 36 new cases of pulmonary tuberculosis. A control group included 19 patients identical in sex, age, and the pattern of pulmonary tuberculosis. The clinical, X-ray, and laboratory indices (primarily cellular immunity) were studies before and 1 and 3 months after treatment. The beneficial effect of kipferon was manifested by a more rapid arrest of symptoms of total intoxication eliminated after 2 weeks in 39% of patients in the experimental group and only in 21% in the controls. Normalization of blood parameters occurred following a month in 58.3 and 47% of patients, respectively. Mycobacteria tuberculosis disappeared in the sputum smears following a month of treatment in 62% of those isolating bacteria in the experimental group and only in 37.5% in the controls (P > 0.1; t = 1.6). Positive lung X-ray changes as resolved infiltration, the reduction and closure of caverns were more pronounced in the patients of the experimental group. The most characteristic change in the parameters of cellular immunity during kipferon was a short (as long as 1-1.5 months) decrease in RBT to FGA, which was noted in 47% and 6.7% of patients in the experimental and control groups, respectively (P < 0.01) and which was followed by an increase in the count of CD8+ cytotoxic lymphocytes. This is indicative of the enhancement of these mechanisms of immunity and a reduced need of enhancing or maintaining the activity of proliferative reactions of immunocompetent cells under the conditions of a favourable influence on the course of tuberculous infection.