Boldine Prevents Renal Alterations in Diabetic Rats
Figure 7
Boldine increases gap junctional coupling between mesangial cells. Coupling incidence (a) and coupling index (b) were evaluated in confluent mesangial cell cultures for 48 h, under different conditions using the dye (Ethidium bromide) coupling technique: normal glucose (white bar), high glucose + cytokine (TNF-α (10 ng/mL) and IL-1β (10 ng/mL)) (black bar), or high glucose + cytokine treated with 100 μM boldine for the last 24 h (grey bar). Each bar represents the mean value ± SEM of 5 independent experiments. In each experiment the dye was microinjected into at least 10 cells. **; ***, using the one-way ANOVA test followed by Bonferroni’s post hoc test. (c) Etd was microinjected into the brightest cell (arrow) and diffused to neighboring cells. Normal glucose (left bottom), high glucose + cytokine (middle bottom), and high glucose + cytokine and treated with 100 μM boldine (right bottom) for 24 h. The top panels are the corresponding phase views. Scale bar = 20 μm.
