Research Article Subanesthetic Isoflurane Reduces Zymosan-Induced

Copyright © 2014 Hui Wang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Volatile anesthetic isoflurane (ISO) has immunomodulatory effects. The fungal component zymosan (ZY) induces inflammation through toll-like receptor 2 or dectin-1 signaling. We investigated the molecular actions of subanesthetic (0.7%) ISO against ZY-induced inflammatory activation in murine Kupffer cells (KCs), which are known as the resident macrophages within the liver. We observed that ISO reduced ZY-induced cyclooxygenase 2 upregulation and prostaglandin E 2 release, as determined by western blot and radioimmunoassay, respectively. ISO also reduced the production of tumor necrosis factor