MicroRNA-181b regulates endotoxin tolerance by targeting IL-6 in macrophage RAW264.7 cells

Interleukin 6 (il-6) is a major pro-inflammatory cytokine and dysregulation of il-6 is relevant to many inflammatory diseases. endotoxin induced tolerance of il-6 is an important mechanism to avoid the excessive immune reaction. but to date,the molecular mechanisms of endotoxin tolerance of il-6 remain unclear. here we reported that il-6 secretion and microrna-181b (mir-181b) expression were inversely correlated following lps stimulation. we also demonstrated that mir-181b targeting the 3′-utr of il-6 transcripts and up-regulation of mir-181b was associated with nf-kb. we further demonstrated that up-regulation of mir-181b in response to lps was required for inducing il-6 tolerance in macrophage. our results suggested that the post-transcriptional control mediated by mir-181b could be involved in fine tuning the critical level of il-6 expression in endotoxin tolerance. © 2015 zhang et al.; licensee biomed central.