Abstract: AIM: To investigate the effects of cholinergic drug carbachol on the expression of inflammatory cytokines from rat abdominal macrophages stimulated by lipopolysaccharide( LPS).METHODS: Rat peritoneal macrophages were collected and exposed to carbachol, nicotine or muscarine, and then stimulated by LPS for 4 hours.Supernatants of cultures were harvested and assayed for TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-10 by ELISA method.RESULTS: The expressions of TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-10 were significantly increased after LPS stimulation.The increase of TNF-αand IL-6 expression was inhibited after addition of carbachol and nicotine, which was dose-dependent in carbachol group.The inhibitive effect of muscarine was much less than that of carbachol and nicotine ( P <0.01 ).Carbachol and nicotine had no significant effect on IL-10 release stimulated by LPS.CONCLUSION: The results suggest that carbachol, similarly to nicotine, inhibits the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines but has no effect on the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines on inflammatory model of rats abdominal macrophages.

Key words: carbachol, macrophages, inflammatory, cytokine, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay