Without question, the most direct method of examining the cytokine response after spinal cord injury would be to obtain samples of the cord itself. While this has largely been the method by which such phenomena have been examined in animal models, it is obviously not possible in living human patients. The recent study by Yang et al. evaluated the spinal cord tissue from patients who had died, but did not sample the CSF to determine how closely the cord changes were reflected in the CSF space. In a rat spinal cord contusion injury model, Wang et al. demonstrated an increase in IL-1 in both the spinal cord tissue itself and in the CSF.(Wang et al., 1997) While the IL-10 concentration was much lower in the CSF than in the cord, the increase in IL-10 in the CSF after spinal cord injury paralleled the increase observed in the cord. These animal data suggest that cytokine analysis of the CSF can provide some meaningful data about what is happening within the cord.