Influence of integrated therapy with Traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine on lymphocytes and T-lymphocyte subpopulations of patients with SARS

The objective was to study how integrated therapy with Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine regulated the immune function of the body by analysing its effects on lymphocytes and T-lymphocyte subpopulations in patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Forty-seven patients with SARS were randomly allocated to either the integrated treatment group or the group treated with Western medicine for a treatment course of 3 weeks. Levels of lymphocytes and subpopulations of T-lymphocytes, CD3, CD4/CD8, were measured in peripheral blood before and after treatment. Before treatment, the absolute level of lymphocytes in the peripheral blood of 38 of the patients was low, and a decrease in percentages of CD3, CD4/CD8 was observed in 19 cases. Comparison of the difference in the absolute value of peripheral lymphocytes in the two treatment groups before and after treatment showed a statistically significant difference (p <0.01﴿, and the integrated treatment was superior to the treatment with Western medicine alone in this respect. Before treatment, there were 19 patients with extremely low CD3 levels (9 in the integrated treatment group and 10 in the group treated with Western medicine alone). After treatment there were two and eight cases in the integrated treatment group and the group treated with Western medicine alone, respectively. The numbers of patients with extremely low levels of CD4/CD8 before treatment were 15 and 13 in the integrated treatment group and the group treated with Western medicine, respectively and the numbers after treatment were 5 and 10, respectively. Fisher’s exact test was used for statistical analysis. The integrated treatment was obviously superior to the treatment with Western medicine alone in promoting recovery of Tlymphocyte subpopulations (p <0.05). The integrated treatment was obviously superior to the treatment with Western medicine alone in alleviating inhibition of lymphocyte activity, raising the level of Tlymphocyte subpopulations and enhancing immune function.