Intravenous anesthetic propofol suppresses prostaglandin E2 production in murine dendritic cells

Propofol is an intravenous anesthetic that is widely used for anesthesia and sedation. Dendritic cells (DC) are one of the crucial immune cells that bridge innate and adaptive immunity, in which DC process antigens during innate immune responses to present them to naive T-cells, leading to an establishment of adaptive immunity. Prostaglandin (PG)-E2 may be secreted by DC into the microenvironment, considerably influencing DC phenotype and function, and thus determining the fate of adaptive immunity. Since propofol suppresses PGE2 production in murine macrophages, the primary purpose of the present study was to determine whether propofol also suppresses PGE2 production in DC. Assuming a positive finding of such suppression, we tested whether this also leads to alterations of interleukin (IL)-12 and IL-10 production and DC surface marker expression, both of which can be modulated by PGE2. In bone marrow-derived DC, propofol significantly suppressed the PGE2 production after lipopolysaccharide stimulation. C...