In addition to their logical connection to appendicitis, which often has an infectious etiology, certain aspects of this expression pattern increase the confidence that some of these changes are non-random: 1) multiple probe sets identifying the same transcript (DEFA1), 2) ‘hits’ on highly related transcripts, such as DEFA1 and DEFA3, as well as CXCR1 (IL8 receptor α) and CXCR2 (IL8 receptor ß). This evidence concerns the gene DEFA3 and appendicitis.