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. 2023 Nov 22;98:104883. doi: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2023.104883

Fig. 7.

Fig. 7

Stimulation of normal human lung fibroblasts with SSc fluids (a–d), or inflammatory or fibrotic cytokines (e). (a–d) 5% BAL supernatant from SSc without ILD (BAL SSc) or SSc-ILD (BAL SSc-ILD), or 1% serum from SSc without ILD (SSc serum) or SSc-ILD (SSc-ILD serum) or healthy control (Pool serum) was used to stimulate lung fibroblasts. (a) SSc-ILD BAL and serum-treated fibroblasts overexpressed cxcl10 compared to SSc without ILD BAL (Mann–Whitney U test, P = 0.004) and serum (Mann–Whitney U test, P = 0.0087). Also, SSc-ILD BAL-treated fibroblasts had higher cxcl10 levels compared to CTRL (Mann–Whitney U test, P = 0.0022). Fibroblasts treated with SSc-ILD serum significantly overexpressed cxcl10 compared to fibroblasts treated with healthy serum (Mann–Whitney U test, P = 0.0022). SSc-ILD serum-treated lung fibroblasts overexpressed ctgf expression compared to SSc without ILD and pool sera (Mann–Whitney U test, P = 0.026 and P = 0.0087, respectively). (c–d) No statistically significant differences in tgfβ or αsma expression when lung fibroblasts were treated with BAL or serum (Mann–Whitney U test). The results are medians of three technical experiments (n = 3) where 6 patients' biofluids were used (N = 6). (e) IL-6 (10 ng/ml or 100 ng/ml) or TGF-β (10 ng/ml) or both were used to stimulate lung fibroblasts for 4 h. IL-6 stimulated cxcl10 expression in lung fibroblasts in a concentration-dependent manner. The higher concentration of IL-6 (100 ng/ml) showed increase of cxcl10 expression with a trend towards statistical significance of P value = 0.055 vs. CTRL (Mann–Whitney U test). The results are medians with IQR of three technical experiments (n = 3). CTRL: culture media without stimulant.