MEFV expression and C5a-inhibitor activity in normal skin and peritoneal fibroblast cell cultures induced with (A) IL-1β or (B) PMA.

RT-PCR was performed with the use of primers from exons 9 and 10 as described in “Materials and methods.” The size of the amplifiedMEFV fragment was 350 bp. C5a-inhibitor activity is shown at the bottom (see legend to Figure 3). Lanes 1-4: Cultures induced with 10 ng/mL IL-1β for 24 hours. Lanes 5-8: Cultures induced with PMA 100 nmol/L for 1 hour. Lane 1: Normal peritoneal fibroblasts. Lane 2: IL-1β–induced peritoneal fibroblasts. Lane 3: Normal skin fibroblasts. Lane 4: IL-1β–induced skin fibroblasts. Lane 5: Normal peritoneal fibroblasts. Lane 6: PMA-induced peritoneal fibroblasts. Lane 7: Normal skin fibroblasts. Lane 8: PMA-induced skin fibroblasts. The experiments were performed with cells from passage 6 and above. A representative experiment is shown in the figure.