Fig. 9.

Effect of chronic inhibition of CXCR1/2 by Reparixin on cytokine release from degenerating discs. Following 8 weeks of reparixin treatment, the L1/2, 2/3 and 3/4 discs were excised and cultured for 48 h. Conditioned media was analyzed by protein arrays. A) Secretion of cytokines from SPARC-null discs normalized to WT discs and presented as the log of the fold-difference between the two groups. B) Secretion of cytokines from reparixin-treated vs. vehicle-treated SPARC-null discs and presented as the log of the fold-difference between the two groups. Red indicates increased secretion of a factor whereas green indicates a decrease in secretion of a factor. The mean ± SEM fold difference of select cytokines comparing discs from C) vehicle-treated SPARC-null vs. WT and D) reparixin-treated vs. vehicle-treated SPARC-null mice. Note C&D are the fold-change representations of the same data as A&B (log fold-change). n = 8 per SPARC-null groups, n = 5 per WT group. Data was analyzed by one-tail t-tests. * = p < 0.05, ** = p < 0.001. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)