This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal

Arch Surg. 2001;136:1084.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

For nearly a decade, the fundamental questions of my laboratory have been, "Is endothelin an alternate activating pathway for leukocytes in injury, ischemia, and sepsis?" and "Is monocyte/macrophage-produced endothelin a clinically relevant factor in the vasoconstriction observed in some vascular beds with injury and infection?" Because the motto of my lab is "If we knew what we were doing, we wouldn't call it research," I must confess that after 10 years of investigating and thinking about these questions, I still do not know the answer to either of them.

The report by Onuoha et al¹ in a recent issue of the ARCHIVES raises the problem of trying to identify in samples from patient studies the role of a factor that principally affects local tissues, is rapidly cleared from plasma, may be increased in production and clearance both locally and systemically, has several isoforms, and whose activity may change based on . . . [Full Text of this Article]