Fig. 5

Effect of Citral on NLRP3 inflammasome activation in the kidney of the animal model, and on in vitro lipopolysaccharide (LPS) + ATP-induced IL-1β secretion by naïve peritoneal macrophages. a Representative western blots for cytosolic levels of NLRP3 and IL-1β in the kidney, with β-actin as the loading control. b and c Semiquantitative analysis of the NLRP3/β-actin ratio and IL-1β/β-actin ratio. d Cytosolic caspase-1 activity measured by ELISA and expressed relative to the protein content. e Effect of Citral pretreatment of peritoneal macrophages from naïve mice on in vitro LPS + ATP-induced IL-1β secretion. Peritoneal macrophages were incubated with Citral or saline for 30 minutes, then LPS was added for 5.5 h, when the cells were incubated for 30 minutes with ATP. The controls were incubated with saline at each stage. Bars show mean ± standard error of the mean for 7 mice per group; **p <0.01, ***p <0.005. ALSN accelerated and severe lupus nephritis