Chemokine secretion and inflammatory signaling are additively promoted after treatment of J774 macrophages with palmitate and mmLDL.

<p>Macrophages were incubated for 16h with 100 μM palmitate and/or 6h with 50 μg/mL mmLDL, and then either untreated or treated with 10 ng/mL LPS. Culture media was collected and CXCL2 and TNF-α levels (A) were measured by ELISA. ELISA was conducted with technical duplicates, and data presented are based on three independent replicate experiments. Phosphorylation of ERK MAPK and p38 of NF-κB was measured by immunoblotting (B). The relative expression levels of p-ERK and pp38 were normalized to ERK and p38, respectively (B). Immunoblotting was performed for three independent replicate experiments. *p <0.05 compared to LPS treatment without palmitate or mmLDL.