[Clinical observation on effect of shenqi fanghou recipe in preventing and treating radiation injury in patients with head and neck tumor].

OBJECTIVE: To observe the therapeutic effect of shenqi fanghou recipe (SFR) in preventing and treating radiation injury in patients with head and neck tumor. METHODS: One hundred and forty patients with head and neck tumor, including nasopharyngeal carcinoma, carcinoma of tonsil or tongue, were randomly divided into 2 groups, 70 patients in the observed group were given modified SFR as adjuvant to radiotherapy, while 70 patients in the control group were treated with radiotherapy alone. The radiation reactions during radiotherapy and the condition of late stage radiation injury radiotherapy in patients in the 2 groups were observed. RESULTS: The degree of oropharyngeal mucosa reaction, dryness in mouth and radiation dermatitis in cervical region in the observed group was milder than those in the control group, and the radiation injury induced late stage sequelae, such as the degree of mouth-opening was better and the cervical muscular sclerosis was better in the observed group than in the control group, showing significant difference (P < 0.01). CONCLUSION: SFR has definite effect in preventing and treating radiation reaction and late stage radiation injury in patients with head and neck tumor.

[Expressions of P16 and nm23-H1 in nasopharyngeal cacinoma and their clinical significance].

OBJECTIVE: To examine the expressions of P16 and nm23-H(1) protein in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and explore their association with clinicopathology and the level of argyrophilic protein of the nucleolar organizer regions (AgNORs) of peripheral blood T lymphocyte (T-AgNORs) before radiotherapy. METHODS: SP immunohistochemistry was used to detect P16 and nm23-H(1) expressions in 65 cases of NPC, and the level of T-AgNORs was measured before radiotherapy. RESULTS: The positivity rate of P16 and nm23-H(1) protein in NPC was 24.6% (16/65) and 61.5% (40/65), respectively. The positivity rates of P16 and nm23-H(1) protein in patients in T(1) and T(2) stages were higher than those in patients in T(3) and T(4) stages, but the difference was not statistically significant (P>0.05). No significant association of P16 expression was noted with lymph node metastasis and post-radiotherapy distant metastasis (P>0.05). In patients with regional lymph node and distant metastases, the positivity rates for nm23-H(1) were 51.2% (21/41) and 33.3% (5/15), which were significantly lower than those in patients without local lymph node (79.2%, 9/24;X(2)= 4.99, P<0.05) or distant metastasis (70%, 35/50; X(2)=7.56, P<0.01). The levels of T-AgNORs in P16- and nm23-positive cases were higher than those in the negative cases (t=5.721, P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: nm23-H(1) expression in NPC tissue is correlated with NPC metastasis and may be useful for clinical prediction of local lymph node and distant metastases after radiotherpay. nm23 and p16 expressions are also correlated with the level of T-AgNORs, which probably indicate the immune functions of the patients.