Fig 6.

Regulation of IL-25-induced α-SMA, fibronectin and MMPs expression through various signaling pathways in NPDFs. (A) The expression levels of α-SMA, fibronectin, MMP-1, and MMP-13 were determined by western blot assay or RT-PCR. Treatments with the specific inhibitors significantly inhibited IL-25-induced α-SMA (B), MMP-1 (D), and MMP-13 (E) protein expression (p < 0.05). IL-25-induced fibronectin (C) expression was inhibited by pretreatment with NF-κB, JNK, and p38 pathway inhibitors, but not by the ERK inhibitor. IL-25-induced fibronectin mRNA expression level was measured by RT- PCR (F). The total soluble collagen level was measured by collagen assay (G) Values are expressed as means ± standard errors of independent experiments. *P<0.05 vs control; †p <0.05 vs IL-25 alone. Triple tests were performed on all of the experiments. U = specific inhibitor of ERK, SB = specific inhibitor of p38, SP = specific inhibitor of JNK, Bay = specific inhibitor of U = specific inhibitor of NF-κB.