Fig. 3: Effects of anticholinergic drugs on the production of TSLP in 16HBE cells stimulated with rhIL-17A or with ISs from COPD patients.

16HBE cells, in the presence or absence of Tiotropium (100 nM), were stimulated with rhIL-17A (20 ng/ml) or with ISs from COPD patients, untreated or treated with anti-IL-17A antibody, as well as with DTT (vehicle of ISs) (n = 6 for each experimental condition). a and b show TSLP protein detected by western blot analysis as described in the “Materials and methods” section. Representative gel images of the experiments are shown. Bars represent the mean ± SD of arbitrary densitometric units (A.D.U.), normalized to β-actin, which was used as the loading control. c and d show TSLP mRNA levels measured by real-time PCR as described in the Materials and Methods section (n = 3) and expressed as fold-change compared with untreated cells, which were chosen as the reference samples. ANOVA with Fisher’s test correction was used to analyze data. A p value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant