Fig. 6
Dopamine increases IL-1β and NLRP3 in HIV-infected microglia. C20 microglia were infected with 2.5 ng/mL HIVADA for 48 h, then treated with dopamine (10–6 M) for 3 h and examined for (A) IL-1β and (B) NLRP3 mRNA expression by qPCR. For both IL-1β and NLRP3 there was a significant increase with HIV + Dopamine relative to HIV alone. C iMicroglia were infected with 1 ng/mL of HIVADA for 7 days with or without dopamine (10–6 M) and representative immunofluorescent images at 60X objective (DAPI, blue; CellMask, red; p24, green) show higher levels of cell fusion and giant cell formation as well as p24 expression (white arrows) in infected dopamine-treated cultures relative to cultures only infected with HIV. iMicroglia were also infected with 1 ng/mL of HIVADA for 7 days and then treated with dopamine (10−6 M) for either 3 h to examine IL-1β mRNA expression with qPCR or 4 h to examine IL-1β production by AlphaLISA. D Analysis of IL-1β mRNA levels show dopamine increases IL-1β in HIV-infected cells. E Analysis of lysate IL-1β levels by AlphaLISA show there is a trend that dopamine increases IL-1β in HIV-infected cells. Significance was determined by paired t-tests and Wilcoxon tests, *p < 0.05 and **p < 0.01