Figure 5

Effects of ethanol on intracellular ROS and the activation of NF-kB. (A) HepG2 cells were treated with ethanol (0.2%) with/without PTDC or C3G for 0.5 hours. Intracellular ROS was detected by flow cytometry as described in Materials and methods. (B) The relative levels of intracellular ROS were quantified. **P < 0.01. (C-D) HepG2 cells were treated with ethanol (0.2%) with/without PTDC or C3G for 2 hours. Expression of IkBα, p-IkBα and NF-kB p65 in cytoplasm and nuclei was analyzed by immunoblotting (left panel). The relative expression levels were quantified with a densitometry (right panel). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01. (E) NF-kB activity was detected by the luciferase reporter gene assay. **P < 0.01, n = 3.