[The peripheral monocytic effect in patients with cervical carcinoma following radio- and immunopotentiation therapy]

Activation of the monocyte-macrophage system is the principal mechanism underlying host defense, immune response with lymphocytic interaction and defence against spontaneous arising tumors. In view of these fact, we investigated effects of radio- and immunopotentiation therapy (OK432) on the following processes in patients of stage III and IV cervical carcinoma. 1) Number of Monocytes determined by Naphthyl Butyrate Esterase and Wright staining. 2) The rate of glucose utilization assessed by Conray-Ficoll density gradient separation. Comparison was made among patients all received radiotherapies with and without subsequent immunopotentiation therapy. In healthy female individuals, the number of peripheral monocytes determined by esterase staining was 338.5 +/- 52.6/microliters. Thus, immunopotentiation recovered the monocyte count, as long as the dose of OK432 was less than 8KE (679.3 +/- 78.5/microliters) (p less than 0.05). The difference was also found in the glucose utilization by monocytes in radiotherapies, the utilization rate was small (98.2 +/- 1.3%), whereas it was much greater in immunopotentiation therapy (82.6 +/- 3.2%). These collectively indicate that the immunopotentiation therapy by OK432 results in non-specific activation of macrophage which will be evaluated as an indicator of cancer immunotherapy and will be also effective for the combined cytoreductive immunotherapies.