Figure 8. DH-PS induced IL-1ra production through MAPK, PI3K and NF-κB.

(A) THP-1 cells (2×10⁶ cells/ml) were pretreated with the indicated concentrations of inhibitors for various kinases including ERK/ELK, JNK, p38 MAPK, PI3K and NFκB (0.01, 0.1 and 1 μM, except for ERK and PI3K: 0.1, 1 and 10 μM) or DMSO (0.1%) as control for 60 minutes and cultured with DH-PS (100 μg/ml) for another 18 hrs (B) Human CD14⁺ cells were pretreated with the indicated concentrations of inhibitors or DMSO as control like (A) and cultured with DH-PS (100 μg/ml) for another 18 hrs. Supernatants were harvested for IL-1ra measurements. Results were presented as fold of control (Y-axis) derived from the mean values of IL-1ra concentrations of inhibitor-treated groups divided by DMSO control group and error bars showed the standard deviation of triplicate. Statistically significant difference (Mean concentrations of IL-1ra were used for the comparisons): * compared with DMSO-treated group, p<0.05. # compared with DMSO-treated group, p<0.005. (C) THP-1 cells (2×10⁶ cells/ml) were pretreated with inhibitors for ERK/ELK (10 μM), JNK (1 μM), p38 MAPK (1 μM), PI3K (10 μM) and NFκB (1 μM) or DMSO (0.1%) as control and cultured with DH-PS (100 μg/ml) for another 12 hrs. Cells were collected for the assessment of mRNA expression of IL-1ra.