INTERLEUKIN-1p APPLICATION FOR LOCAL TREATMENT OF PURULENT AND NECROTIC LESIONS OF LOWER EXTREMITIES
Treatment of chronic wounds is a difficult problem of contemporary surgery. An opportunity of curing these wounds by means of cytokines, such as interleukin-1 (IL-1), is an issue of great interest. A clinical trial of IL-1β was performed in the patients with chronic wounds of different origin. Recombinant human IL-1β smears were performed before starting the treatment and in the course of therapy. Clinical results for the wound lesions (2nd and 3rd phases) have demonstrated high efficacy of ointments containing IL-1β at 0.5 to 5000 ng/ml. The most efficient concentration was determined as 50 ng IL-1β in 1 ml of ointment. IL-1β treatment caused clinical improvement of wound healing in 90% of the patients, including those with diabetes. IL-1β application during 2nd and 3rd phases of wound process showed good correlations with cytological changes in wound cell smears. When using IL-1β-containing ointments, the terms of granulation and epithelisation terms were reduced, along with 1.5-fold increase in average healing rates, as compared to conventional treatment with Solcoseril and Vulnusan. Mechanisms of IL-1β action were similar for the patients with wounds of different origin. Application of IL-1β-containing requires daily changes of wound dressings with the ointment. What to complications, local allergic reactions were detected only in 1.9% of cases. To summarize, the results of our study provide an evidence that IL-1β-containing ointment is a useful drug for effective treatment of nonhealing wounds and trophic ulcers in patients. <i>(Med. Immunol., vol. 10, N4-5, pp 439-448)</i>