In the patients with bacterial or fungal sepsis, the presence of a malignancy (n = 27; without malignancy n = 155) was associated with higher concentrations of CRP (152 vs 127 mg/l, P = 0.07), sTLR2 (62 vs 23 ng/ml, P = 0.001) and sTLR4 (7.2 vs 4.3 ng/ml, P = 0.15), although this only reached statistical significance for sTLR2. The gene discussed is CRP; the disease is cancer.