Dr. Raghavan Murugan, together with several Pitt and University of Texas at Houston colleagues in the HIDonOR study, has published an article in the June issue of Critical Care Medicine entitled "Increased Plasma Interleukin-6 in Donors is Associated with Lower Recipient Hospital-free Survival after Cadaveric Organ Transplantation." Thirty consecutive brain dead organ donors and 78 recipients were studied at two major university medical centers, UPMC and UTHSC. The massive inflammatory response occuring in brain death was studied, especially the increased plasma levels of proinflammatory cytokines, such as interleukin (IL) -6 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Of these two, IL-6 was associated with increased mortality among the recipients. Dr. Murugan presented preliminary data of this study at the 2006 International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine in Brussels, Belgium, for which he received an award.