Fig. 2

Expression analysis of proinflammatory cytokines in MAC-T cells. Cells were treated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) at 1 μg/mL for 24 h in combination with dexamethasone (DEX) (20 μg/mL) or isoliquiritigenin (ISL) (2.5, 5 and 10 μg/mL). With β-actin as an endogenous control, real-time PCR and ELISA were used to detect mRNA (A-C) and protein (D-F) levels. Values represent the means ± SEM of four independent experiments. In the above bars, ** indicate significance at P < 0.01 between the control and the LPS treatment without DEX and ISL. Among LPS in combination with DEX and ISL treatments, the same letters indicate P > 0.05; different lowercase letters indicate P < 0.05 while different uppercase letters indicate P < 0.01