**14. Killing**

Data about the bactericidal activity of diabetic PMNs have yielded conflicting results [25, 26, 33, 37]. An impaired killing function of diabetic PMNs was found in all studies using *Staphylococcus aureus* as the microorganism [25, 26, 37], but not in the studies in which the killing of *C. albicans* [33] was used as the measure. Killing was impaired in one study that used non-diabetic serum for opsonisation [37], but not in another [33]. Thus, based on these studies, any conclusions about the effect of non-diabetic serum on the killing of diabetic cells cannot be drawn. No correlation was found with glycaemic level [25, 26, 37], although some studies have shown that bactericidal activity improved, but did not normalise after achieving normoglycaemia [6, 37].
