Abstract
The efficacy of nonspecific immunotherapy for immunosuppression caused by surgical stress was studied. Asthe degree of surgical stress increased, both PHA-induced blastogenesis and natural killer (NK) activity ofperipheral blood mononuclearcells (PBMC) of tumor bearing rats were reduced, followed by facilitation of lungmetastasis. Administration of OK-432 prior to surgical stress, however, prevented the reduction of immunity of PBMC and the facilitation of lung metastasis. In gastric cancer patients, the values of PHA-induced blastogenesisand NK activity of PBMC 1-2 weeks after gastrectomy were significantly lower than those measuredbeforesurgery. Pre-and postoperative immunotherapy prevented the reduction of immunity of PBMC, while postopera-tive immunotherapy did not. Furthermore, to evaluate the efficacy of nonspecific immunotherapy, a total of 275gastric cancer patients were randomly divided into the following 3 groups; a pre-and postoperative immunotherapygroup, a postoperative immunotherapy group and a group without any immunotherapy. The patients whosecancers were histologically classified as stage I because of both m and n0 were excepted from the study. When thepatients classified as having stage II cancer were statistically analyzed, the survival ofthe pre-and postoperativeimmunotherapy groups was significantly longer than thatof the postoperative immunotherapy group. The resultsindicate that nonspecific immunotherapy which is started prior to surgery should be effective against theimmunosuppression caused by surgical stress and should prolong survival.
