Sebastien Gibot, Service de Réanimation Médicale, Hôpital Central, and Laboratoire de Physiologie Expérimentale (Groupe Choc), Faculté de Médecine, Nancy, France

Correspondence to: Dr Sebastien Gibot, Service de Réanimation Médicale, 29 bld du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, Hôpital Central, Nancy 54035, France. s.gibot@chu-nancy.fr

Telephone: +33-3-83852970  Fax: +33-3-83858511

Received: 2006-02-07           Accepted: 2006-02-28

© 2006 The WJG Press. All rights reserved.

Key words: TREM-1 expression; Abdominal surgery

Gibot S. TREM-1 expression during major abdominal surgery: Comment on the Gonzalez-Roldan et al paper. World J Gastroenterol 2006; 12(29): 4767

 http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/12/4767.asp

TO THE EDITOR

I read with a great interest the paper by Gonzalez-Roldan et al^[1]. The authors reported on the pattern expression of TREM-1 during sepsis and major abdominal surgery as compared to healthy controls and concluded that TREM-1 expression increased on the surface of monocytes after surgery. Several points deserve consideration. First, no data related to TREM-1 expression on neutrophils is provided. Second, of the 7 surgical patients, only 4 had both pre- and post-surgery cytometry analysis. Among these 4 patients, 2 displayed a decrease of TREM-1 expression after surgery. Therefore, it seems quite hazardous, based on these data, to conclude that TREM-1 increases after major uncomplicated surgery, reflecting a systemic inflammatory response.

    The other question that arose from this study is related to the determination of the TREM-1 splice variant (svTREM-1). First, it is still unknown whether this variant is translated or not^[2]. Anyway, the soluble form of TREM-1 is not believed to be related to this variant^[3]. The authors observed an increase of the svTREM-1 mRNA after surgery or during sepsis. By using the described primers, one could also expect to see a PCR product corresponding to the natural form of TREM-1^[3]. Unfortunately, such a product is not reported. Finally, it is rather disappointing not to see any measurement of plasma sTREM-1 in these patients in order to better characterise the “inflammatory” patients and the septic ones^[4].

REFERENCES

1    Gonzalez-Roldan N, Ferat-Osorio E, Aduna-Vicente R, Wong-Baeza I, Esquivel-Callejas N, Astudillo-de la Vega H, Sanchez-Fernandez P, Arriaga-Pizano L, Villasis-Keever MA, Lopez-Macias C, Isibasi A. Expression of triggering receptor on myeloid cell 1 and histocompatibility complex molecules in sepsis and major abdominal surgery. World J Gastroenterol 2005; 11: 7473-7479  PubMed

2    Gingras MC, Lapillonne H, Margolin JF. TREM-1, MDL-1, and DAP12 expression is associated with a mature stage of myeloid development. Mol Immunol 2002; 38: 817-824  PubMed

3    Gibot S, Kolopp-Sarda MN, Bene MC, Bollaert PE, Lozniewski A, Mory F, Levy B, Faure GC. A soluble form of the triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells-1 modulates the inflammatory response in murine sepsis. J Exp Med 2004; 200: 1419-1426  PubMed

4    Gibot S, Cravoisy A, Levy B, Bene MC, Faure G, Bollaert PE. Soluble triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells and the diagnosis of pneumonia. N Engl J Med 2004; 350: 451-458  PubMed

S- Editor Wang J E- Editor Bi L