| Abstract: | Panax ginseng, one of the most widely used plant medicines, was combined with radiotherapy, and studied against intrahepatic sarcoma-180 tumour cells in mice. Oral administration of ginseng extract, radiation treatment and the combination of both increased the life span of tumour-bearing mice to 20.4%, 16.9% and 82.1%, respectively. The same treatments were found to be cytotoxic to sarcoma-180-induced liver tumour cells. The synthetic rates of DNA, RNA and protein of the tumour cells were all inhibited measurably by the combined treatment. Histopathological studies showed that radiation treatment destroyed both cancer and liver cells and the cells shrank and became necrotic. The ginseng treatment seemed to help the recovery of liver cells and no infiltration of cancer cells was noted. |
