RESUMO
Any effective therapy for elimination of causal agents remaining in Yusho patients was not found until now. To know the profile of fecal excretion of polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the amounts of PCDFs and PCBs in the stool of six Yusho patients with the typical symptoms were determined. The stool samples of Yusho patients were collected in 1989. PCDFs, i.e., 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzofuran (TCDF), 2,3,4,7,8-pentachlorodibenzofuran (PnCDF), 1,2,3,4,7,8- and 1,2,3,6,7,8-hexachlorodibenzofurans (HxCDFs), 1,2,3,4,6,7,8-heptachlorodibenzofuran (HpCDF) and octachlorodibenzofuran (OCDF) were detected in all of the samples. PCDFs found in the stool samples were mostly PnCDF and HxCDFs. Of PCDFs detected, PnCDF and HxCDFs contributed to 42 +/- 4.7% and 43 +/- 5.5% as mean +/- SE, respectively. The fecal excretion of PnCDF and HxCDFs in Yusho patients was 720 +/- 490 pg/day and 790 +/- 620 pg/day as mean +/- SE, respectively. On the other hand, the fecal excretion of PnCDF and HxCDFs in normal controls was 32 +/- 13 pg/day and 47 +/- 5.2 pg/day as mean +/- SE, respectively. The fecal excretion of PnCDF and HxCDFs in Yusho patients was about 23 times and 17 times each higher than that in normal controls. The fecal excretion of PCBs in Yusho patients and normal controls was 400 +/- 430 ng/day and 150 +/- 39 ng/day, respectively, as mean +/- SE. In order to promote the excretion of these toxic chemicals in the stool of Yusho patients, the patients were continuously administered with cholestyramine, an anion exchange resin, at a dose of 4 g, 3 times a day, for 6 months.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)