Fig. 4

Celastrol attenuated the expression of proinflammatory genes in light-exposed retinas. Dark-adapted BALB/c mice were exposed to bright light at 10,000 lx for 2 h after pretreatment with either DMSO or celastrol at 5 mg/kg bw. Retinas were collected 6 h and 1 day after light exposure and further processed for total RNA isolation, reverse transcription, and real-time PCR analyses for expression of IL1β, Ccl2, COX2, and TNFα, respectively. After normalizing the expression to GAPDH, relative fold change of expression was calculated against that from the retinas collected from the mice unexposed to bright light (no light). Data were expressed as mean ± S.E.M. (n = 4–6 per group). *Compared to that from no light, p < 0.05; ^#compared to that from DMSO, p < 0.05