Figure 2.

Effect of β₂-adrenoceptor agonists on IL-6 and IL-8 mRNA expression. BEAS-2B cells were either left untreated or were incubated with salbutamol (1 µM), salmeterol (0.1 µM) or formoterol (0.01 µM) for 1 h prior to either being left not stimulated (NS) or stimulated with IL-1β (1 ng·mL⁻¹), or IL-1β (1 ng·mL⁻¹) and histamine (100 µM) (I + H). Cells were harvested after 6 h, and TaqMan real-time RT–PCR was carried out for IL-6, IL-8 and GAPDH. Relative cDNA concentrations (n= 3), normalized to GAPDH, are plotted as mean folds ± SEM. *P < 0.05 versus IL-1β, #P < 0.05, ##P < 0.01 versus I + H.