Figure 4

AICAR inhibits LPS- and Aβ- (25–35) induced expression of iNOS, COX-2, and MnSOD in astrocyte-enriched glial cells. Cells were preincubated with 1 mM AICAR for 4 h prior to treatment with either LPS or Aβ (25–35) in concentrations indicated earlier. After 18 h incubation, an aliquot of the medium was used for nitrite measurement as described under Methods. Data are mean ± SD of three different experiments. (A) Cell homogenates were used for western-immunoblot analysis of iNOS, COX-2 and MnSOD. Western immunoblots for iNOS (B) and MnSOD (C) upon treatment of glial cell cultures to LPS and to various concentrations of Aβ (25–35) either in the presence or absence of 0.5 mM AICAR (lane 1 is control, lane 2 LPS alone, and in lanes 3 to 6, Aβ was added to final concentrations of 7.5, 15, 30 or 45 μM, respectively). The protein bands were scanned on a densitometric scanner and represented as a graph (bottom). Experiments were performed in triplicate and data are means (±SEM). *P < 0.05 compared to relative control value was considered significant.