Table 1

Patient characteristics

	Patient
	1	2	3	4	5
Age yrs	49	54	68	63	55
Origin	White	White	White	White	White
Sex	Male	Male	Male	Male	Male
Nationality	German	German	German	Assyrian	German
First diagnosis	1996	1992	1996	April 1999	1997
Previous therapy	Prednisolone since 1996, warfarin since 1992	Prednisolone since 1997, azathioprine 1997– February 1998	Prednisolone since 1997, cyclophosphamide 1997– 1998	Prednisolone since 1999	Prednisolone since 1997
Concomitant disease	Portal vein thrombosis due to protein C and AT III deficiency	Goiter	Myocardial infarction 1992, DVT 1988	1997 transurethral resection of prostate gland	None
Smoking status	20 pack-yrs until 1985	50 pack-yrs until 1986	50 pack-yrs until 1992	Never smoked	Never smoked
Profession	Businessman	Heating technician	College teacher	Army officer	Lawyer
Treatment date with IFN‐γ_1b	September 1997–January 1998	May 1998–September 1998	May 1998–May 1999	January 2000–January 2001	March 2000–June 2000
Special remarks	Sister died of probable IPF. Was listed for LTx and received a graft lung in 2000	Was listed for LTx and received graft lung May 1999		Lost for follow-up	Was listed for LTx. Died after 3 months of therapy with IFN‐γ; autopsy findings and clinical data suggest right heart failure
TLC at study entry L	5.4	4.2	4.0	3.3	4.0
TLC at end of study L	4.1	4.1	4.6	2.9	3.8
IVC at study entry L	3.9	2.4	2.7	1.7	2.7
IVC at end of study L	2.8	2.4	2.8	1.6	2.5
FEV₁ at study entry L	3.2	2.1	2.1	1.6	1.7