Introduction
Classical dogma taught that the brain is immunologically privileged and does not mount an endogenous immune response. Immunohistochemical and molecular biological evidence accumulated over the past decade, however, has shown that the brain is capable of sustaining an immune response and that the result may be damaging to host cells. The brain, rather than being immunologically privileged, may be particularly vulnerable since neurons are postmitotic.
Introduction
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the most common age-related neurodegenerative disorders, second in frequency only to Alzheimer’s disease. In the United States, at least half a million people are diagnosed as having PD, and the frequency of PD is predicted to triple over the next 50 years as the average age of the population increases.[1]
The British Columbia Cancer Agency subdivides responsibility for provincial cancer care into several different tumor groups with multidisciplinary representation. The Gastrointestinal Tumor Group is one of these. At one of our meetings the concept of a group of articles for the British Columbia Medical Journal on colorectal cancer arose, since at the time, it seemed that little attention was being paid to this disease—one that affects men and women alike and costs many lives each year in our province.
