“…Released cytokines and other inflammatory mediators function as soluble intercellular messengers to communicate with and recruit other immune cells and thus are integral in regulating inflammation and the immune response [119,141,142]. Many studies have found that various NPs induce an increase in both gene and/or protein expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines [25,98,117,131,134,136,137,[143][144][145][146][147][148], while other NPs have been found to be antiinflammatory [136,[149][150][151][152][153][154][155][156]. The transcription factor NF-κB has a central role in regulating the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-α, IL-8, IL-2, and IL-6, while MAPKs are involved in regulating the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-α, IL-1, IL-6, IL-8, and MCP-1 [101,157].…”