Fig. 4: Effect of anticholinergic drugs on TSLP production in NHBE cells stimulated with rhIL-17A or with ISs from COPD patients.

NHBE cells, in the presence or absence of Tiotropium (100 nM), were stimulated with rhIL-17A (20 ng/ml) (n = 3) or with ISs from COPD patients untreated or treated with anti-IL-17A antibody (n = 3) 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 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 and expressed as fold-change compared with untreated cells, chosen as the reference sample. ANOVA with Fisher’s test correction was used to analyze data. A p value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant