Fig. 7

Effect of JNK, p38 and ERK inhibitors on the expression of TNF and IL-6 in BV-2 cells stimulated with fowlerstefin. a RT-PCR analysis. BV-2 cells were pretreated with different concentrations (0, 1, or 10 µM) of JNK inhibitor (SP600125), p38 inhibitor (SB203580) or ERK inhibitor (U0126) for 3 h before the cells were incubated with fowlerstefin (15 µg/ml) for 3 h. The cells were harvested and the expression of TNF and IL-6 was analyzed by RT-PCR. GAPDH was used as an internal control. A representative gel image of three independent experiments which revealed similar patterns is presented. Graphs show the mean ± SD densitometric ratios of TNF and IL-6 to GAPDH of three independent experiments. b ELISA. The amount of TNF and IL-6 expressed by the BV-2 cells was quantitatively measured by ELISA. Values are presented as the mean ± SD of three independent experiments. One-way ANOVA with Dunnett’s post-hoc test was performed to determine significant differences from the inhibitor-untreated cells (for details, see Additional file 3: Text S1). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.001, ***P < 0.0001