Recently, immunosuppressive acidic protein (IAP) and immunosuppressive substance (IS) were reported by two institutions, and they have been currently under extensive clinical investigations. As these two acidic proteins seemed to be very similar glycoproteins, we tried to elucidate clinically the dissimilarities between these two substances. The mean value of IAP of 106 healthy donors was 378 +/- 100 micrograms/ml, and as 95% of them was under 550 micrograms/ml, therefore, the upper limit of normal value of IAP was determined to be 550 micrograms/ml. On the other hand, the mean value of IS was 553 +/- 125 micrograms/ml and the upper limit of normal value was 750 micrograms/ml. In 110 gastric cancer patients, the incidence of the abnormal value of IS (43%) was higher than that of IAP (33%), and abnormal values were observed at earlier stage in IS than that observed in IAP. The reaction of skin tests was more highly correlated with the value of IS than the value of IAP. From these facts, it was suggested that the value of IS was more predictable than that of IAP as the parameter of the immunosuppression of the gastric cancer patients.
Sarcoidosis is a multisystem granulomatous disease of unknown aetiology with variable manifestations, which may affect virtually any organ. Muscular sarcoidosis is a rare entity, and among this group of muscular lesions, the tumour-like muscular sarcoidosis subtype is extremely rare. We report on two sarcoidosis cases that presented muscular sarcoid lesions with subcutaneous tumours.
Kato, K., Antoku, S., Kodama, K., Kawamura, S., Fujita, Y., Komatsu, K. and Awa, A. A. Organ Doses from Radiation Therapy in Atomic Bomb Survivors. Radiat. Res. 155, 783–793 (2001).Previous surveys of radiation therapy among the Life Span Study (LSS) population at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) revealed that 1,670 (1.4%) of the LSS participants received radiation treatments before 1984. The data on therapeutic radiation doses are indispensable for studying the relationship between radiation treatments and subsequent cancer occurrences. In this study, the radiation treatments were reproduced experimentally to determine the scattered radiation doses. The experiments were conducted using a female human phantom and various radiation sources, including a medium-voltage X-ray machine and a 60Co γ-ray source. Doses were measured using thermoluminescence dosimetry and ionization chambers. Radiation doses were determined for the salivary glands, thyroid gland, breast, lung, stomach, colon, ovary and active bone marrow. The results have been used for documenting the organ doses received by patients in previous surveys. The contribution of therapeutic irradiation to the occurrence of chromosome aberrations was studied using data on doses to active bone marrow from both radiation treatments and atomic bomb exposures in 26 RERF Adult Health Study participants. The results suggest that radiation treatments contributed to a large part of their frequencies of stable-type chromosome aberrations. The therapeutic radiation doses determined in the present study are available for investigating the effects of therapeutic irradiation on the subsequent primary cancers among atomic bomb survivors who received radiation treatments.
