There is our evidence that rat peritoneal mast cells are involved in the selleck products inflammatory response to T. vaginalis (11). However, there are no reports that crosstalk (interaction) between VECs and mast cell influences the inflammation caused by T. vaginalis. In this study, we examined whether conditioned medium prepared by incubation of VECs with T. vaginalis could stimulate mast cells. Our experiments indicated that human mast cells migrate towards such conditioned medium and release β-hexosaminidase and inflammatory cytokines and subsequently induce neutrophil migration. Therefore, mast cells may be involved

in the inflammatory reaction caused by T. vaginalis via an interaction with human VECs. Cell culture media, Iscove’s modified Dulbecco’s medium (IMDM), Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium (DMEM) and RPMI 1640 were purchased from WelGENE (Gyeongsan-si, Korea). PMA, calcium ionophore A23187, Histopaque 1077 and human plasma fibronectin (FN) were obtained from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, MO, USA). Recombinant human stem cell factor (SCF) was purchased from PeproTech Inc. (Rocky Hill, NJ, USA), and recombinant human monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (rMCP-1) and recombinant

human interleukin 8 (rIL-8) were purchased from R&D Systems (Minneapolis, MN, USA). For RT-PCR, commercially available primer sets of TNF-α, IL-8 and MCP-1 were supplied by Bioneer (Daejeon, Korea). Trichomonas vaginalis isolate learn more T016 was grown in TYM medium supplemented with 10% heat-inactivated horse serum at 37°C. Immortalized MS-74 human VECs were kindly provided by Prof. J.F. Alderete (Washington State University) and grown in DMEM supplemented PLEKHB2 with 10% foetal bovine serum (FBS), at 37°C, in the presence of 5% CO2 (9). Human leukemic mast cells (HMC-1) were grown in IMDM supplemented with 10% FBS at 37°C in a 5%-CO2 incubator. Human neutrophils were isolated from peripheral venous blood drawn from healthy women, as previously described (12). Briefly, the neutrophils were purified by dextran sedimentation followed by Histopaque 1077

density gradient centrifugation. Cell viability was determined by the trypan blue exclusion test (>99%). For preparation of VEC-conditioned medium, MS-74 human VECs (3 × 105/mL) were cultured in the absence or presence of T. vaginalis (3 × 106) for 6 h. Supernatants were obtained by centrifugation at 10 000 × g and 4°C for 30 min and filtered using a 0·2-μm syringe filter (Millipore, Billerica, MA, USA). Culture supernatants of VECs incubated with and without trichomonads were named trichomonad conditioned medium (TCM) and conditioned medium (CM), respectively. HMC-1-conditioned medium (M-TCM, M-CM) was made in the same way by incubating mast cells with TCM or CM for 6 h at 37°C in a 5%-CO2 incubator.