Fig. 4.

Curcumin reduces NPC1L1 promoter activity. Intestinal Caco-2 cells were transiently transfected with human NPC1L1 promoter along with pCMVβ for β−galactosidase to normalize for the transfection efficiency. Twenty four hours posttransfection, cells were treated for 24 h with different concentrations of curcumin and harvested for firefly luciferase and β-glactosidase assays to assess the promoter activity. Results are shown as %control and represent the mean ± SE of 6–9 values obtained from at least 3 separate occasions. *P < 0.05 or less compared with control.