Figure 6.

The vagus nerve has a stimulating effect on kupffer cells. Kupffer cells were isolated from control mice (column “control”) and from vagotomised mice without sepsis (column “VGX”). The basal TNF release of kupffer cells ex vivo is significantly decreased if mice were vagotomised 7 days before cell isolation (164.7 ± 40.9 pg/mL versus 61.1 ± 4.4 pg/mL, *P = 0.04). In addition, we stimulated the cells ex vivo with 1 μg/mL lipopolysaccharide from E.coli (LPS). In the septic organism, there is a significantly decreased TNF-α release by stimulated kupffer cells from vagotomised mice (2960 ± 513.1 pg/mL) when compared to mice with an intact nervus vagus (5746 ± 292.5 pg/mL, ***P = 0.0002, n = 10 per group).