The Effect of Ginseng on the Nutritional Status and Immune Functions after Curative Operation for Gastric Carcinoma Patients

Ginseng has been used as one of herb medicines and vital-additive drugs for long time. After the reports suggesting that ginseng has the anti-cancer effect, there were many other studies for the anti-cancer effect of ginseng and its mechanisms. The anticancer effect of ginseng is explainable by two mechanisms. One is direct cancer cell killing effect of some components of ginseng, and the other is reinforcement of immune functions of hosts, especially immune sur- veillance mechanisms. Authors performed long-term administration of ginseng to the patients with gastric cancer who had undergone curative surgery to analyse the effect of ginseng on the subjective symp- toms, immune and nutritional status. To know the clinical anticancer effect of ginseng, authors randomly selected 39 patients with curative operation for gastric cancer. All the patients received postoperative adjuvant immunochemotherapy; the twenty patients classified as the study group received 5400 mg of red ginseng everyday for two years postoperatively, and the 19 patients of control group had follow-up only. For both groups of patients, authors compared the preoperative and postopera- tive changes of appetite, body weight to height ratio, triceps skinfold thickness, serum protein, albumin and transferrin level, percentage of lymphocyte and T-cell percentage in peripheral blood. Although our data does not show that the long-term administration of ginseng into gas- tric cancer patients with curative resection improved the nutritional status, it was suggested that it would improve subjective symptoms and immune functions, and prevent postoperative recurrences.