[The effect of immunochemotherapy with PSK in malignant tumors of the female reproductive organs].

In our series of investigations concerning immunopotentiators, we evaluated the host immunocompetence of patients triggered by PSK. Our subjects for screening consisted of seven patients with malignant tumors of female reproductive organs chosen at random from our patients. Four of them were treated with chemotherapy (CAPF) alone and served as controls, whereas the other three were administered PSK, 3.0 g/day, plus chemotherapy as above. Cellular and humoral immunities were measured at three points. Firstly prior to chemotherapy, secondly, two weeks after the start of chemotherapy, and thirdly, prior to next chemotherapy. The results indicated higher values of T-cell subset ratio OKT-4/8 of 2.73 +/- 0.56 on the average for cellular immunocompetence as compared to 1.35 +/- 0.45 for normal subjects in the PSK-administered group, whereas there was no increase in the non-PSK-administered group, in which the value was 1.28 +/- 0.30. Thus, PSK was considered to extert an immunopotentiating effect on the T-lymphocytes.