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. 2011 Oct 18;6(10):e25589. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0025589

Figure 1. Correlation of endoscopic inflammation and transcriptional expression of IL8.

Figure 1

IL8 mRNA expression determined in A. colonic and B. ileal mucosal samples is increased in biopsies taken in inflamed areas of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients when compared to healthy controls. In samples of patients in remission, colonic samples of Crohn's disease (CD) patients with isolated ileal disease (CD-L1) and ileal samples of CD patients with isolated colonic disease (CD-L2), IL8 levels are similar to healthy controls. Whereas no increase in IL8 is observed in samples taken in endoscopically non-inflamed mucosa of active ulcerative colitis (UC) patients, a significant increase is seen in non-inflamed colonic samples of active CD patients when compared to healthy controls. The data are expressed as medians and presented on a log scale (*p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***P<0.001, #P<0.0001). A ROC curve analysis of IL8 was performed on all samples (C. colon and D. ileum) and when non-inflamed samples of active CD patients were excluded (E. colon and F. ileum). The increase in sensitivity when excluding non-inflamed colonic samples of active CD patients confirms that those samples are an inappropriate control for the study of inflammation.