Figure 7.

Cholesterol is partially involved in simvastatin-mediated protection against pore-forming toxins (PFTs). (A) HBE1 cells were treated with 100 nM simvastatin with or without 30 μg/ml cholesterol for 24 hours and then washed. After 1 hour, cells were challenged with 400 ng/ml PLY for 3 to 4 hours. Asterisks indicate significant statistical difference between groups based on one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s post test. Error bars represent SEM of four experiments. (B) A549 cells were pretreated with 20 μM simvastatin for 24 hours and then challenged with 200 ng/ml α-hemolysin for 4 hours. Error bars represent SEM of three experiments. (C) The overview of our proposed pathway of how simvastatin acts via an alternative pathway (red) that bypasses the HMGCR–mevalonate pathway in addition to the HMGCR downstream pathway to confer PFT protection in airway epithelial cells. **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001.