Figure 1. Isoflurane, Sevoflurane and Desflurane alter mRNA expression levels of tumour metastasis genes shown by array analysis.

SK-OV3 cells were treated with air (N₂) or 2% Isoflurane (Iso) or 3.6% sevoflurane or 10.3% Desflurane for 2 hours, and then recovered in the normal cell incubator for up to 24 hours. Six hours after exposure analysis of the tumour metastasis PCR array was carried out. Unsupervised hierarchical cluster analysis using Euclidean distance from TaqMan low-density arrays. Gas treatment induced changes in the expression of 70 out of 81 mRNAs relative to the controls and, in comparison to sevoflurane and isoflurane, desflurane led to greater increases in mRNA (N=4). All data is relative to endogenous control, β-Actin. Red and green colours indicate relatively high and low expression, respectively.