gp120 mediated increased levels of IL-6 in primary human fetal astrocytes.

<p>1×10⁶ primary human fetal astrocytes from each of three different donors were treated with 20 nM gp120 IIIB for specific lengths of time and the cells were harvested to obtain mRNA. The cell culture supernatants were collected at the times indicated and used to quantify the level of IL-6 protein expression using a Bio-Plex assay. Levels of IL-6 mRNA expression as measured by real-time RT-PCR peaked at 1 hour (A) and IL-6 protein expressions peaked at 6 hours (B). Monoclonal antibody for gp120 was used to negate the gp120 mediated response and thus served as another control. Heat inactivated gp120 was compared with untreated control to show gp120 specific IL-6 expression (C). Different strains of gp120 (D) and monomeric gp120 SF162 and trimeric gp140 SF162 (E) increased the levels of IL-6 differentially. Primary astrocytes from different donors were transfected with gp120 plasmid in order to compare the levels of IL-6 expression after 2 hours (D). Each bar represents mean ± SE of 3 experiments with each experiment done in triplicates. The statistical significance was calculated using student's t test and * and ** denotes p value of ≤0.05 and ≤0.01, respectively.