Abstract
It has been reported that the immunity is low in patients with chronic renal failure. On the other hand, along with recent advance in hemodialytic technology, patients on long-term hemodialysis are increasing in number, and the rehabilitation and carcinogenicity of long-term hemodialysis patients are now attracting wide attention. In this paper, for the purpose of studying on the carcinogenicity of those patients and its cause, the incidence of malignant neoplasms was searched and cellular and humoral immunity were investigated.
Out of 504 hemodialysis patients, eighteen (3.57%) were found to have malignant neoplasm, mainly cancers of digestive tract, and to be significantly higher compared with healthy people.
In the study on immunity, on the lymphocyte subsets research using flow cytometry, OKM1 positive cells (NK/K-cells) were decreased significantly in hemodialysis patients. But on the lymphocyte blast formation by PHA mitogen, similar responses were noted.
However, the suppression activity of peripheral lymphocytes of hemodialysis patients for PHA mitogen response of healthy lymphocytes was strongly higher than the activity of healthy.
Furthermore, serum IAP in those patients were increased significantly. On the other hand, patients of chronic renal failure are under chronic anemia and have a high chance of recieving blood transfusions.
When compared between recieving and non-recieving blood transfusions, OKT4 positive cells (helper/inducer T cells) were decreased to a degree in the group recieving blood transfusions.
These results indicated that decrease of the cell-ular and humoral immunity could be the cause of the high incidence of malignant neoplasms in hemodialysis patients.
