Fig. 2.

α₁-AR mediated synergistic IL-1β production from a human monocyte cell line. A, representative immunoblot of resolved THP-1 total cell lysates. The 42-kDa actin band is shown as a loading control. B, quantitative analysis of all immunoblots (n = 5) showed increased IL-1β expression from monocytes treated with LPS alone (3.3 ± 0.8-fold). There was a synergistic increase in IL-1β generated from cells treated with PE plus LPS (8.7 ± 3.0-fold). There were decreased IL-1β levels from monocytes pretreated with BE 2254 (3.4 ± 1.0-fold) or STS (2.8 ± 0.4-fold). There were no IL-1β differences from cells treated with PE (1.0 ± 0.6-fold), BE 2254 (0.9 ± 0.3-fold), or STS (0.9 ± 0.2-fold) alone. C, quantitative ELISA analysis for secreted amounts of IL-1β from THP-1 cells (n = 5). There was increased IL-1β secretion from monocytes treated only with LPS (23.6 ± 4.2 pg/ml). There were also synergistic IL-1β increases from monocytes treated with PE plus LPS (59.5 ± 11.1 pg/ml). There were no differences in IL-1β secreted from cells treated with PE alone (8.2 ± 0.9 pg/ml) compared with basal (2.3 ± 0.2 pg/ml). ★, p < 0.05 versus control; #, p < 0.05 versus LPS; °, p < 0.05 versus PE + LPS.