Table 4.

Influence of chronic ethanol feeding and NAC treatment on pro-inflammatory cytokine levels in liver tissue

Protein	Chow	C-TEN	C-TEN+NAC	Et-TEN	Et-TEN+NAC	F-Ratio	P-Value
IL-1β	31.63 ± 4.321	85.68 ± 21.36	56.47 ± 6.103	67.16 ± 16.68	52.02 ± 4.738	10.31	0.036
IL-2	392.6 ± 45.03	929.5 ± 237	521.1 ± 80.05	976.5 ± 280.6	692.6 ± 48.36	10.77	0.029
IL-4	17.97 ± 2.545	40.19 ± 11.3	25.59 ± 5.391	36.16 ± 17.56	25.97 ± 3.068	4.25
IL-6	229.8 ± 27.34	548.7 ± 176.3	355.4 ± 35.12	420.7 ± 110.2	434.6 ± 44.05	7.31	0.12
GM-CSF	36.07a ± 7.817	195.1a-*** ± 36.58	82.28 ± 12.83	142.1 ± 43.76	83.83 ± 10.96	18.05	0.001
GRO/KC	98.33a ± 7.55	199.9a-** ± 34.37	142.4 ± 14.39	180.7 ± 43.24	123.5 ± 5.058	12.90	0.012
TNF-α	11.34 ± 1.898	14.08 ± 3.828	15.03 ± 2.336	15.82 ± 4.465	13.74 ± 1.865	3.45
VEGF	11.3 ± 1.889	21.5 ± 5.301	14.59 ± 2.562	27.81 ± 8.942	14.02 ± 0.8307	2.23

Effects of chronic ethanol and NAC treatment on pro-inflammatory cytokine and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression in liver. Liver protein homogenates were used to measure immunoreactivity to IL-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, TNF-α, GM-CSF, GRO/KC, and VEGF by multiplex ELISA. Immunoreactivity was normalized to protein concentration and data reflect mean ± S.E.M. of fluorescence light units (arbitrary). Inter-group comparisons were made using one-way ANOVA. F-Ratios and significant P-values are indicated in the far right columns. Significant inter-group differences were detected with the post-hoc Kruskal-Wallis multiple comparison tests.

Superscript “a” indicates the comparison groups and

^*P<0.05;

^**P<0.01;

^***P<0.001.