Fig. 2. Down-regulation of tissue factor (TF) messenger RNA transcription and protein expression in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated mononuclear blood cells (MBCs) in the presence of perfluorohexane (PFH). (A ) Detection of tissue factor messenger RNA by reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction in MBCs after 2 h of stimulation with lipopolysaccharide (10 μg/ml). (B ) Perfluorohexane effect on TF expression of MBCs in dependence of increasing concentrations of lipopolysaccharide compared with control samples without perfluorohexane. Note the substantial inhibition of cellular TF antigen content over the entire lipopolysaccharide concentration range tested. (C ) Kinetics of TF expression in MBCs after lipopolysaccharide stimulation (10 μg/ml) in the presence of 30% perfluorohexane [vol/vol] (mean ± SD of three independent experiments). Note the significant decrease of cellular TF content after 6 h, when maximum levels of TF expression in monocytes were observed. (D ) Inhibition of TF expression in MBCs after 6 h of lipopolysaccharide stimulation (10 μg/ml) in the presence of increasing amounts of perfluorohexane. Results are presented as mean percentage of TF content of control cells without perfluorohexane (± SD) from 17 independent experiments (paired t test, * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.001). GAPDH = glyceraldehyd-3-phosphate dehydrogenase.