Fig. 2.

Beta-glucans differentially affect expression of typical M1 and M2 genes in M(IL-4) macrophages. CD14+ monocytes were differentiated into macrophages following 7 days of culture in the presence of M-CSF (see Materials and Methods for details), after which cells were polarized with IL-4 for 18 h. The resulting M(IL-4) macrophages were stimulated for another 18 h with 500 μg/ml curdlan, grifolan, schizophyllan, lentinan, zymosan, yeast-a, yeast-b or 100 µg/ml oatβG or yWGP, and analyzed for gene expression of CCR7, CD80, ICAM-1, CD83, CXCL9, HLA-ABC, HLA-DR, CD163, CD209 and MRC1 using QPCR; medium values are used as controls and displayed by gray bars and horizontal lines. Results are shown as average 1/ΔCt (Ct of target gene—Ct of beta-actin) of n = 3 different donors, and analyzed with non-paired Student’s t test in comparison to medium values. Statistically significant differences: *p < 005, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001