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Immunoprotective
activity of the galactoside-specific lectin from mistletoe after tumor
destructive therapy in glioma patients
Lenartz D,
Stoffel B, Menzel J, Beuth J
Stadtische
Kliniken, Department of Neurosurgery, Koln, Germany
35
patients suffering from malignant stage III/IV glioma were enrolled into a
prospectively randomized clinical trial.
All patients were provided with standard oncologic treatment (neurosurgery,
radiation, basic clinical care according to protocol and indication) and
randomly divided into
a) treatment group: receiving subcutaneous injections of a ML (a galactoside-specific
lectin from mistletoe) standardized mistletoe extract, 1 ng ML-1/kg BW, twice a
week for 3 months, starting on day 1 post surgery,
b) control group: without additional complementary treatment.
Immunophenotyping of peripheral blood leukocytes was done by flow cytometry (pre
surgery; day 1, week 1, month 3 and 6 post surgery) to evaluate the
immunomodulating capacity of ML-1 standardized mistletoe extract.
Standard tumor destructive treatment of glioma proved to be suppressive for
peripheral blood lymphocytes, since all subsets tested revealed statistically
significant down regulation.
Unlike the lymphocyte counts and activities of patients from the control group
who gave preoperative values after 3-6 months), mistletoe treatment induced a
statistically significant up regulation of cell counts (CD-3, CD4, CD-8 cells)
and activities (CD-25, HLA/DR positive cells) after 3 months, as compared to
preoperative values.
Obviously, a strong immunoprotective/immunostimulatory effect was induced by the
treatment of glioma patients with ML-1 standardized mistletoe extract which
correlated with an improved quality of life, as determined by a standard
questionnaire (Spitzer).
PMID:
9042260 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Source:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9042260&dopt=Abstract
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