Table 1.

Quercetin prevents the increase of cytokines induced by cholesterol: in vivo and in vitro studies.

Plasma
pg cytokines/ml plasma	C	CQ	HC	HCQ
IL-1β	15.54±5.52	4.91±1.54***	38.93±7.11##	2.63±1.33***
TNF-α	1.63±0.28	1.79±0.29*	2.81±0.24##	1.94±0.28*
IFN-γ	42.91±2.36	35.13±1.01*	63.81±8.65#	25.06±6.34***
GM-CSF	3.39±0.76	3.47±0.76*	35.49±12.45##	2.88±0.10**
Min6 cells
pg cytokines/mg protein	Control	Quercetin 50 µM	Cholesterol 320 µM	Quercetin 50 µM+Cholesterol 320 µM
IL-1β	70.30±0.97	73.97±1.39*	79.86±0.63###	73.05±1.33**
TNF-α	13.06±0.34	13.02±0.46*	15.04±0.44##	13.44±0.18*
IFN-γ	29.94±0.69	30.64±0.99*	35.54±1.54#	29.12±1.67**
GM-CSF	119.1±2.01	92.36±5.12***,##	168.6±2.30###	93.67±6.02***,##

Pro-inflammatory markers in plasma from rats fed control diet (C), control diet containing 0.5% quercetin (CQ), high cholesterol diet (HC) and high cholesterol diet containing 0.5% quercetin (HCQ). Values are expressed as mean±SEM. N=6–8 rats/group.

Pro-inflammatory markers in Min6 cells treated for 20 h with 320 µM cholesterol and/or 50 µM QUE. Values are expressed as mean±SEM, from three independent culture preparations, each treatment performed in quadruplicate. All two-way ANOVA, symbols indicate Bonferroni post-test significances ^#in comparison to control and *to (high)-cholesterol.*p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001; ^#p<0.05, ^##p<0.01, ^###p<0.001.