Figure 1.

Extracellular zinc promoted hypoxic astrocytes death through the increase of intracellular zinc. Primary astrocytes (A) or C8‐D1A cells (B) were incubated with indicated concentrations of zinc chloride for 30 min before hypoxic treatment. After 3 h of hypoxic treatment, cell death rates were assayed by the Cytotox 96 nonradioactive cytotoxicity assay kit. The intracellular free zinc was visualized using FluoZin‐3 fluorescence probe after the hypoxic treatment. (C) C8‐D1A cells in normoxia. (D) C8‐D1A cells treated with 100 μM zinc chloride for 3 h in normoxia. (E) C8‐D1A cells exposed to hypoxia for 3 h. (F) C8‐D1A astrocytes treated with 100 μM zinc chloride plus hypoxia for 3 h. The experiments were repeated 4 times (n = 4). Data were presented as means ± SE. *P < 0.05 compared with normoxia without zinc; ^# P < 0.05 compared with hypoxia without zinc.