Figure 5. Effects of mapracorat and dexamethasone on interleukin-8 (IL-8) secretion induced by ionomycin in eosinophils. Cells (0.5x10⁶ cells/well) were suspended in cell culture medium containing 0.1% fetal bovine serum and exposed to phosphate buffered saline (PBS) or to the vehiche; alternatively, cells were treated with mapracorat or dexamethasone (0.001–10 μM); after 45 min, ionomycin (2 μM) was added. Controls were not exposed to ionomycin. IL-8 was assayed by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay on supernatant samples collected 18 h later, as described under Methods. Data are presented as mean±standard error of the mean from six experiments performed in triplicate using different eosinophil cell cultures (for the sake of clarity some error bars are not reported). Abbreviations: Ctrl, represents controls; ion represents ionomycin; DEX represents dexamethasone. Mapracorat did not cause any significant change of the concentration-response curve in comparison to dexamethasone (two-way ANOVA with Bonferroni post test).