Fig. 3.

Glycyrrhizin rescues elevated pro inflammatory cytokine release from macrophages cultivated in BEAS-2B conditioned media (a) Treatment with 1 mM glycyrrhizin rescues the heightened expression of IL6 and CXCL18 in macrophages cultivated in conditioned media from SARS-CoV-2 S-RBD- and Orf3a-transfected BEAS-2B cells, as indicated by qRT-PCR analysis. The graphs represent average fold change values from three independent experiments. (b) Cytometric bead array demonstrating release of proinflammatory cytokines IL-1β, IL-6 and IL-8 from macrophages cultivated in the conditioned media of SARS-CoV-2 S-RBD- and Orf3a-transfected BEAS-2B cells, in the presence and absence of 1 mM Glycyrrhizin. The graphs represent average fold change values from three independent experiments. One-way ANOVA (with Tukey’s multiple comparison post-hoc test) was used for statistical analysis. p < 0.05*, p < 0.01**, p < 0.001***