Figure 7.

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation up-regulated miR-21 expression in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from healthy controls, and down-regulated miR-21 expression from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. PBMC (3 × 10⁶) from RA patients (n = 6) and healthy control (n = 6) with or without LPS (200 ng/ml) stimulation for 24 hrs were isolated for total protein or RNA. (A) p-STAT3 (Tyr705) activation level was measured by Western blotting. The results show a representative blot from three experiments. (B) MiR-21 was quantified by real-time PCR. The expression of miR-21 is shown as relative levels compared with the group without LPS stimulation from healthy controls. Data are expressed as the mean ± SEM. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001 (Student’s t-test).