BACKGROUND: Paraquat causes severe tissue toxicity when ingested, but has no effective treatment modality. We have shown that high dose vitamin C has effective antioxidant activities against the paraquat intoxication in a previous animal experiment. This study was designed to evaluate the effect of antioxidant therapy with high dose vitamin C and vitamin E in human cases of paraquat intoxication. METHODS: From August 1999 to August 2001, 19 paraquat intoxication patients who visited the emergency department of the Seoul National University Hospital and the Kyounghee University Hospital were enrolled to this study. They were devided into two groups, a control group(9 patients) and a study group(10 patients). The control group received only conservative managements including gastro-intestinal decontaminati-on. The study group received conservative managements plus the antioxidant therapy which was composed of vitamin C 24 gm/day intravenously and 20 gm/day orally, and vitamin E 1.6 gm/day orally. RESULTS: In the study group, 5 of 10 patients(50%) survived, but all patients of the control group died(p=0.003). There were no significant differences in age, sex, and usage of gastric lavage and activated charcoal between the two groups. Difference in ingested amount of paraquat between the two groups could not be analyzed due to the inexact and subjective measuring methods based on patients'histories. CONCLUSION: Antioxidant therapy with high dose vitamin C and vitamin E is effective in improving survival rate in paraquat intoxicated patients.
Animal Experimentation ; Ascorbic Acid ; Charcoal ; Emergency Service, Hospital ; Gastric Lavage ; Humans ; Paraquat* ; Seoul ; Survival Rate ; Vitamin E ; Vitamins

Natural killer (NK) cells provide one of the initial barriers of cellular host defense against pathogens, in particular intracellular pathogens. Because bone marrow-derived hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), lymphoid protenitors, can give rise to NK cells, NK ontogeny has been considered to be exclusively lymphoid. Here, we show that porcine c-kit+ bone marrow cells (c-kit+ BM cells) develop into NK cells in vitro in the presence of various cytokines [interleukin (IL)-2, IL-7, IL-15, IL-21, stem cell factor (SCF), and fms-like tyrosine kinase-3 ligand (FLT3L)]. Adding hydrocortisone (HDC) and stromal cells greatly increases the frequency of c-kit+ BM cells that give rise to CD2+CD8+ NK cells. Also, intracellular levels of perforin, granzyme B, and NKG2D were determined by RT-PCR and western blotting analysis. It was found that of perforin, granzyme B, and NKG2D levels significantly were increased in cytokine-stimulated c-kit+ BM cells than those of controls. And, we compared the ability of the cytotoxicity of CD2+CD8+ NK cells differentiated by cytokines from c-kit+ BM cells against K562 target cells for 28 days. Cytokines-induced NK cells as effector cells were incubated with K562 cells as target in a ratio of 100:1 for 4 h once a week. In results, CD2+CD8+ NK cells induced by cytokines and stromal cells showed a significantly increased cytotoxicity 21 days later. Whereas, our results indicated that c-kit+ BM cells not pretreated with cytokines have lower levels of cytotoxicity. Taken together, this study suggests that cytokines-induced NK cells from porcine c-kit+ BM cells may be used as adoptive transfer therapy if the known obstacles to xenografting (e.g. immune and non-immune problems) were overcome in the future.
Adoptive Transfer ; Blotting, Western ; Bone Marrow ; Bone Marrow Cells ; Cytokines ; Granzymes ; Hematopoietic Stem Cells ; Hydrocortisone ; Interleukin-15 ; Interleukin-7 ; Interleukins ; K562 Cells ; Killer Cells, Natural ; Perforin ; Stem Cell Factor ; Stromal Cells ; Transplantation, Heterologous ; Tyrosine

Background: The quick sequential organ failure assessment (qSOFA) score is suggested to use for screening patients with a high risk of clinical deterioration in the general wards, which could simply be regarded as a general early warning score. However, comparison of unselected admissions to highlight the benefits of introducing qSOFA in hospitals already using Modified Early Warning Score (MEWS) remains unclear. We sought to compare qSOFA with MEWS for predicting clinical deterioration in general ward patients regardless of suspected infection. Methods: The predictive performance of qSOFA and MEWS for in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) or unexpected intensive care unit (ICU) transfer was compared with the areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) analysis using the databases of vital signs collected from consecutive hospitalized adult patients over 12 months in five participating hospitals in Korea. Results: Of 173,057 hospitalized patients included for analysis, 668 (0.39%) experienced the composite outcome. The discrimination for the composite outcome for MEWS (AUC, 0.777;95% confidence interval [CI], 0.770–0.781) was higher than that for qSOFA (AUC, 0.684;95% CI, 0.676–0.686; P < 0.001). In addition, MEWS was better for prediction of IHCA (AUC, 0.792; 95% CI, 0.781–0.795 vs. AUC, 0.640; 95% CI, 0.625–0.645; P < 0.001) and unexpected ICU transfer (AUC, 0.767; 95% CI, 0.760–0.773 vs. AUC, 0.716; 95% CI, 0.707–0.718; P < 0.001) than qSOFA. Using the MEWS at a cutoff of ≥ 5 would correctly reclassify 3.7% of patients from qSOFA score ≥ 2. Most patients met MEWS ≥ 5 criteria 13 hours before the composite outcome compared with 11 hours for qSOFA score ≥ 2. Conclusion MEWS is more accurate that qSOFA score for predicting IHCA or unexpected ICU transfer in patients outside the ICU. Our study suggests that qSOFA should not replace MEWS for identifying patients in the general wards at risk of poor outcome.

No abstract available.
Drug Therapy* ; Multiple Myeloma* ; Stem Cell Transplantation* ; Stem Cells*