| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,100,000)
Fiscal Year 1998: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000)
Fiscal Year 1997: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 1996: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000)
|
|---|
| Research Abstract |
(1) Natural killer cell activity (NK activity) of the patients with varirous typos of leprosy observed at the outpatient clinic of dermatology at the Ryukyu University Hospital for the past about 13 years were measured. The values were likely to be relatively high in most of multibacillary leprosy and were in normal range in most of pauchbacillay leprosy. From the result obtained, it is suspected that the immunodeficiency for Mycobaeterium leprae is covered by NK activity. (2) We have been tried to shorten the term of multidrug therapy recommended by WHO (MDT/WHO), from 1 to 2 years at least. Chinese medicine (HOCHU EKKI TOU) was prescribed to the patient with leprornatous leprosy (LL) for the purpose of increasing an ability of the elimination by an activation of macrophage and NK cell. (3) The chinese medicine was administered to prevent an occurence of leprosy reaction : From an observation of NK activity of LL patient who had a episode of erythema nodosum leprosum, a relation between the occurence and the low value of NK activity was suspected. After the administration, NK activity continued to show high level and leprosy reaction was not occured at all. We experienced 4 cases of multibacillary leprosy who had been injected IL-2, had not also occurred the leprosy reaction. In the 4 cases, the leprosy reaction were suspected to be suppressed by the feed back reguration for the reaction were which was mainly induced by Th2 and CD8. In the LL case, prescribed chinese medicine, it was suspected that a similar immunological reaction had occured From above mentioned results, we could know some of the immunological network of leprosy and the medication was suspected to be useful clinically in a treatment of leprosy. Although, it is needed to be studied in detail about the difference of histological and immunological responce between erythema nodosum leprosum and borderline leprosy reaction.
|
