Fig. 7

The ethanol-treated, WT astrocyte-derived EVs increased the mir-146a levels in the primary cultures of neurons. a Results of the expression levels for mir-146a and miR-182 by TaqMan advance RT-qPCR in the cultures of the neurons incubated with the EVs that derived from the WT and TLR4-KO astrocytes treated or not with ethanol. A group of untreated neurons with EVs was also added to the experiments. The results are expressed in arbitrary units, with normalizing compared to RNAU6. Data represent mean ± SEM, n = 4–5 independent experiments. *p < 0.05 compared to the neurons without EVs according to the one-way ANOVA followed by Bonferroni’s post-hoc test. b Gene expression analysis by RT-qPCR of some genes selected from the miRNA functional analysis, Traf6, Mapk14, and Foxo3. The results are expressed in arbitrary units, with normalizing versus Cyclophilin A. Data represent mean ± SEM, n = 4–5 independent experiments. *p < 0.05 compared to the neurons without EVs, #p < 0.05 compared to their respective control counterparts according to the t test