The neutrophil (or PMNL) has been established as the cellular counterpart to the humoral immune response mediated by complement activation, and represents a "key effector" cell of the early posttraumatic immune response. Within minutes, and up to several days after injury, neutrophils play an important role in mounting the immunological defense and the debridement of injured tissue. Primed neutrophils are capable of mediating an inflammatory response, characterized by release of cytokines, chemokines, reactive oxygen species, and tissue-toxic enzymes, such as myeloperoxidase and elastase [20, 35] . Aside from the beneficial role of neutrophils in host-defense and clearance of damaged tissue after trauma, excessive priming and cellular PMNL activation may lead to an overwhelming inflammatory response and "innocent bystander" injury to host tissue [35, 36] . Uninjured tissue may become damaged by the local release of toxic metabolites and enzymes, thus contributing to remote organ injury (e.g. to brain and lungs), by contributing to tissue edema and secondary tissue damage [12, 35, [37] [38] [39] .