Mercury modulates interplay between IL-1β, TNF-α, and gap junctional intercellular communication in keratinocytes: mitigation by lycopene

The Blood-Testis Barrier and Its Implications for Male Contraception

“…Taken collectively, these findings illustrate that the basal ES (a testis-specific AJ type) at the BTB is one of the cellular targets of cadmium-induced toxicity in the testis. These findings are also in agreement with studies in epithelia other than the testis, such as the small intestine, kidney, liver, and skin, which imply that cell junctions are the target of different classes of reproductive toxicants, including cadmium (Fiorini et al, 2004;Zefferino et al, 2008;Pinton et al, 2009;Choi et al, 2010;Li et al, 2010). In addition, there is mounting evidence that both AJ (and/or TJ) (Prozialeck and Lamar, 1999;Prozialeck, 2000;Prozialeck et al, 2003;Jacquillet et al, 2007;Thompson et al, 2008;Siu et al, 2009b,c;Calabro et al, 2011) and gap junction (Fukumoto et al, 2001;Jeon et al, 2001;Guan et al, 2007;Tang et al, 2009;Vinken et al, 2010) are targets of cadmium toxicity in multiple epithelia in different organs, such as the kidney, heart, liver, ovary, and testis.…”

Supercritical CO2-Extracted Tomato Oleoresins Enhance Gap Junction Intercellular Communications and Recover from Mercury Chloride Inhibition in Keratinocytes

“…Our results evidenced the ability of tomato and tomato-grape seed oleoresins to enhance, strongly, GJIC in normal human keratinocytes, compared to control. This result confirmed previous results obtained with a different type of S-CO 2 -extracted lycopene (28). The presented results also show that the enhancement of GJIC functionality is associated with the increased level of cx43 mRNA; this does not exclude the possibility of some posttranslational modifications of the connexin 43 protein, and it can represent a starting point to get insight into the mechanism underlying the activation of GJIC by carotenoids.…”

“…Lycopene and some conjugate isoforms were proposed to increase GJIC in different cell types, by increasing the levels of Cx43. Lycopene enhanced GJIC in human fetal skin fibroblasts (25), in KB-1 human oral cancer cells (26), in MCF-7 breast cancer cells (27), and in human keratinocytes (28). Human keratinocytes (the most common type of skin cells) exposed at noncytotoxic mercury(II) chloride (HgCl 2 ) concentrations showed an unbalancing of the redox cellular state and the activation of a redox signaling and the inhibition of GJIC (29).…”

Lycopene prevention of oxysterol-induced proinflammatory cytokine cascade in human macrophages: inhibition of NF-κB nuclear binding and increase in PPARγ expression

“…The reduction of pro-inflammatory cytokines by lycopene and/or tomato products has been reported previously in several in vitro [44][45][46] and in vivo studies [47][48][49][50][51][52][53], although IL-1β and TNFα levels were unaffected or even stimulated by the carotenoid in two recent in vitro studies [54,55], and the consumption of tomato products has been reported to be unable in modulating immune functions in elderly humans [56].…”