RESEARCH ARTICLE Benfotiamine Attenuates Inflammatory Response in LPS Stimulated BV-2 Microglia

Microglial cells are resident immune cells of the central nervous system (CNS), recognized as key elements in the regulation of neural homeostasis and the response to injury and re-pair. As excessive activation of microglia may lead to neurodegeneration, therapeutic strat-egies targeting its inhibition were shown to improve treatment of most neurodegenerative diseases. Benfotiamine is a synthetic vitamin B1 (thiamine) derivate exerting potentially anti-inflammatory effects. Despite the encouraging results regarding benfotiamine potential to alleviate diabetic microangiopathy, neuropathy and other oxidative stress-induced patho-logical conditions, its activities and cellular mechanisms during microglial activation have yet to be elucidated. In the present study, the anti-inflammatory effects of benfotiamine were investigated in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated murine BV-2 microglia. We deter-mined that benfotiamine remodels activated microglia to acquire the shape that is character-istic of non-stimulated BV-2 cells. In addition, benfotiamine significantly decreased production of pro-inflammatory mediators such as inducible form of nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and NO; cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), heat-shock protein 70 (Hsp70), tumor necrosi