Abstract
As already reported in our previous paper, the extract from Candida albicans, which was isolated from the patient with Kawasaki disease, induced arteritis of the coronary artery in mice. This histopathological feature of the arteritis was granulomatous, but not with fibrinoid necrosis, which was quite similar to that of arteritis in Kawasaki disease. There is no specific therapy for Kawasaki disease, because the etiology of the disease is still unknown. However, aspirin and steroid hormones have been used frequently for the patient. This experiment was performed to investigate the effect of aspirin and predonine on the experimental arteritis in mice. As the result, their promotive effect on the development of arteritis was not observed in histological findings, but somewhat different result was obtained between prophylactic effect on the arteritis by those two drugs. It was suspected that predonine seemed to prevent the development of the arteritis rather than aspirin. Although the chemical agents for the arteritis were studied by using purified protein and polysaccharide extracted from Candida albicans MCLS-2. As the result, only polysaccharide fraction induced the arteritis in mice.
