Figure 3.

Dexamethasone pretreatment reduces MMP-9-induced HUVEC monolayer permeability to FITC-dextran. The HUVEC monolayers were pretreated with dexamethasone (100 nmol/L, 1 hour) prior to 1.25 µg MMP-9 or (10 µg/mL) TNF-α application, and FITC-dextran transit was measured from the apical to the basal chambers at 240 minutes (n = 4-18 replicates per group). *P < .01 relative to vehicle by 1-way ANOVA, post hoc multiple comparisons test with Bonferroni correction. Permeability score = basal chamber fluorescence/apical chamber fluorescence × 1000, read over 20 ms. ANOVA indicates analysis of variance; FITC-dextran, fluorescein isothiocyanate-conjugated dextran; HUVEC, human umbilical vein endothelial cell; MMP-9, matrix metalloproteinase 9; TNF-α, tumor necrosis factor-α.