Figure 2. Cytokine expression in gestational tissues.
mRNA expression was determined by RT-PCR in gestational tissues harvested 5 hours after treatment with intrauterine PBS (control) or killed E. coli. Values are normalized to the housekeeping gene GAPDH. Statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) were determined by Kruskal-Wallis test with post-hoc permutation resampling rank test to identify differences among treatment groups. Statistically significant differences between groups are indicated by different letter labels (i.e. groups not different from each other share the same letter label; groups different from each other have different letter labels). When there are no differences between treatment groups, no labels are used. Fetal expression of IL-1β, IL-6 and COX-2 was undetectable.