8–4 g, given orally or as

suppositories. One patient used antihypertensive medication (kandesartancileksetil; Atacand®ö, AstraZeneca, Södertälje, Sweden). In the patients with CD, one used sulphasalazine (Salazopyrin®, Pfizer, New York, NY, USA) (4 g) and one mesalazine (2 g) daily. A third patient with CD used nabumeton (Relifex®, Meda, Solna, Sweden) for arthrosis. All the included participants with UC (n = 10) and CD (n = 11) denied regular smoking. Prior to (day 0) and during (days 2 and 12) the intake of AndoSan™, heparinized blood collected from the included participants was, in one set of experiments, also immediately stimulated ex vivo with LPS (1 ng/ml) for 6 h at 37 °C in a 5% CO2 incubator. During this incubation, the tubes were shortly manually shaken each hour. Then, plasma was harvested and samples Saracatinib ic50 stored at −70 °C until analysis for levels of cytokines. The included UC and CD patients had median disease duration of 15 (2–29) and 10 (2–29) years, respectively. The patients with UC had pancolitis (n = 3), left-sided colitis (n = 3), proctosigmoiditis check details (n = 1) and proctitis (n = 3), of whom two had been treated in hospital for acute colitis. Disease location in CD was ileal (n = 1), ileocolic (n = 6) and colic (n = 4). Three patients had had ileocolic resections. To obtain baseline values of cytokine levels in healthy volunteers, equally treated plasma samples from unstimulated blood were

also analysed for this purpose. also The 15 healthy volunteers (eight men) had median age 36 (range 26–51) years and denied regular smoking and use of steady medication. Analyses.  Blood was harvested from the antecubital vein into glass tubes containing 15 IU heparin per ml or 10 mmol EDTA per ml. The EDTA blood was each time (days 0,

1, 2, 5, 8, 12) analysed for haemoglobin, haematocrite, mean cellular volume, mean cellular haemoglobin, reticulocytes, immature reticulocytes, leucocytes including a differential count of neutrophils, basophils, eosinophils, lymphocytes and monocytes, thrombocytes, C-reactive protein (CRP), urea, creatinine, bilirubin, aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, lactate dehydrogenase, γ-glutamine transferase, alkaline phosphatase and pancreatic amylase. The harvested heparinized blood was immediately centrifuged (2300 g, 12 min) and plasma pipetted off and immediately stored at −70 °C till analysis for micro CRP (days 0, 2, 12) and cytokines (days 0, 2, 12). The CRP was analysed by both ordinary routine laboratory technique from EDTA blood and micro-CRP from plasma by the high sensitive Tina-quant CRP particle-enhanced immunoturbidimetric method performed using a COBAS INTEGRA 400 analyser (Roche Diagnostics, Indianapolis, IN, USA) [28]. This micro-CRP method is especially sensitive in concentrations ≤20 mg/l. Faecal calprotectin concentrations (mg/kg) (normal values <50 mg/kg) at days 0 and 12 were determined in duplicates as reported [18, 29].