Particle-induced Changes in Apoptosis are Restored by Firoin.

Peripheral blood neutrophils from healthy donors (n = 7), 2 h pre-treated with indicated amounts of firoin (F) or 1 mM ectoine (E) before CNP exposition (33 µg/ml). A: After 16 h of CNP treatment, cells were stained with Annexin V and analysed flow cytometrically. Normalized values of % Annexin V-positive cells are shown. Natural apoptosis of untreated cells was considered as 1. Dark bars, CNP-treated, light bars, untreated. * Significantly different from CNP alone (Mann-Whitney U Test after Bonferroni correction for multiple testing p<0.05). B: 6 h post CNP-treatment the anti-apoptotic Mcl-1 expression was measured by Western blot analysis. GAPDH was used as a loading control. Two representative blots from different individuals are shown and irrelevant lanes were removed.