Enhanced cytokine response to surgical trauma in patients with colorectal cancer.

Objective: Cancer is an immunologic challenge, and it was hypothesized that the presence of a cancer could modulate the cytokine response to operative trauma.

Setting: University hospital, Sweden.

Subjects: Patients operated with colonic or rectal resections; 9 patients with colorectal cancer and 16 patients with benign lesions--8 of which were inflammatory.

Expression of tissue-type and urokinase-type plasminogen activator activities in chronic venous leg ulcers.

Background: Chronic wounds have been shown to exhibit elevated levels of several classes of proteinases. Plasminogen activators (PAs) are proteinases which play a major role in the biological processes involved in wound healing and abnormalities in PAs may play a role in the pathology associated with chronic wounds. Here, we investigated the expression of tPA and uPA activities in chronic venous ulcer biopsies.