In culture, mesothelial cells can be further stimulated to produce ECM when exposed to peritoneal effluent from patients with acute peritonitis (Perfumo et al., 1996) or various cytokines and growth factors such as IL-1β, TNF-α, epidermal growth factor (EGF), PDGF, and TGF-β (Owens and Grimes, 1993; Owens and Milligan, 1994; Zhang et al., 2005). Here, EGF is linked to peritonitis.