Fig. 4

Detection of NF-κB activity in MAC-T cells by Western blotting. Cells were coincubated with 1 μg/mL lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and dexamethasone (DEX) (20 μg/mL) or isoliquiritigenin (ISL) (2.5, 5 and 10 μg/mL) for 24 h. The levels of p65 (A), p-p65 (B), IκB (C) and p-IκB (D) proteins were relative to β-actin. Values represent the means ± SEM of three 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