Figure 1.

Pioglitazone modulates glucose metabolism in vitiligo melanocytes. (A) Two days of PGZ significantly increased glucose content in the vitiligo melanocytes medium. (B) PGZ reduced the gene expression of glucose transporters Glut1 and Glut4, but not Glut 3. (C,D) The transcriptional and protein levels of several anaerobic glycolytic enzymes were significantly induced by PGZ. mRNA levels of enzymes involved in β-oxidation (E) and Krebs cycle (F) were lowered by PGZ. (G) The representative Western blot of mTOR, pmTOR, AMPK, pAMPK, and S6, pS6, normalized to β-Actin, in vitiligo melanocytes following 2 days of treatment. The results are the mean ± SD of at least 3 independent experiments, * p ≤ 0.05.