Perioperative hypothermia and stress jeopardize anti-metastatic immunity and TLR-9 immune activation: potential mediating mechanisms (experimental studies).

Overall, these findings suggest that perioperative hypothermic stress can jeopardize anti-metastatic immunity and resistance to metastasis, and prevent perioperative response to immune stimulation and its beneficial anti-metastatic impacts, effects that are not mediated through classical neuroendocrine stress responses, but potentially through direct hypothermic impact on leukocytes. These findings may have clinical implications in operated cancer patients, many of whom suffer hypothermic stress.