Search

Asthmatic symptoms are worsened after drinking small amounts of alcoholic beverages in Japanese asthmatic patients. Our previous results showed that the ingestion of pure ethanol caused a fall in FEV1.0 in about half of the Japanese asthmatics we studied. We studied the inhibitory effects of pretreatment with three kinds of anti-asthmatic agents on ethanol-induced bronchoconstriction in six Japanese asthmatic patients. We tested oral cyproheptadine hydrochloride (8 mg), which is an anti histamine agent, inhaled disodium cromoglycate (2 mg), which has an inhibitory effect on the release of chemical mediators from mast cells, and inhaled atropine sulfate (3 mg), which is an anti-cholinergic agent. Pretreatment with cyproheptadine significantly inhibited the fall in FEV1.0 120 minutes after ethanol challenge (p less than 0.05). Inhaled DSCG had significant inhibitory effects on the fall in FEV1.0 15 and 30 minutes after ethanol challenge (p less than 0.05). Inhaled atropine had no inhibitory effect. These results suggest that histamine, released from mast cells, plays an important role in ethanol induced bronchoconstriction in Japanese asthmatic patients.

Bronchial hypersensitivity was investigated by astograph in 25 nasal allergy patients without clinical symptoms of asthma and 103 healthy people from 20 asthmatic families. The data were compared with those obtained from 36 asthmatics. Intradermal skin tests and HLA typing were also performed on the members of asthmatic families. Bronchial hypersensitivity was present at a much higher rate in nasal allergy patients than in healthy people. It was also demonstrated that bronchial hypersensitivity was present even in non-asthmatics from asthmatic families, and the incidence of bronchial hypersensitivity tended to increase when complicated by nasal allergy. Increased bronchial hypersensitivity was shown in people from asthmatic families with positive skin tests to mites and house dust. Bronchial hypersensitivity seemed to be related to HLA-haplotype in the same family. The results of antigen sensitization as measured by intradermal skin reaction test suggested that hereditary factors play some role in the development of bronchial hypersensitivity.

We have experienced case involving a 63-year-old patient with a pulmonary carcinoma, who was given an enterectomy following a lobectomy, due to minimal intestinal metastasis. In this case, using flow cytometry, the cancer cell nuclear DNA content was analyzed for the primary tumor focus, the mediastinal lymph node metastatic focus, and the small intestinal metastatic focus. For the primary focus, a cancer cellular population of polyploidy with 2 ploidies of DNA content was observed, while for both the metastatic foci, only a single cancer cellular population was observed, indicating the heterogeneity of the nuclear DNA content between the primary focus and metastatic foci. These 2 metastatic foci had DNA contents completely corresponding to that for a ploidy with a high DNA content in the primary focus, suggesting a metastasis of only the above population from the primary focus. The present case apparently formed metastatic foci in other organs than the lungs but only by cancer cells more susceptible to metastasis among the cancer cells found in the primary focus.