Figure 7.

Activation of NF-κB in human oesophageal fibroblasts (HOF) cells after 3-h exposure to human oesophageal squamous (HOS) conditioned medium. NF-κB translocation in HOF cells following exposure to conditioned medium taken from acid-treated HOS cells. Results are calculated as a percentage of the response at pH 7.4 using the same regime and are shown for cells from three different patients (a, b and c). The solid line at 100% indicates the response seen for the pH 7.4 control. In all three experiments, HOF cells show increased NF-κB activation over the pH 7.4 control after exposure to short pulses of pH 5 with both long (30 min) and short (5 min) intervals at pH 7.4, with higher levels of activation when the recovery period was reduced. Significant differences from pH 7.4 treatment are indicated by ***P ≤ 0.001, **P ≤ 0.01, *P ≤ 0.05.