Dexamethasone (dex)

The whole herb (Batch No.: 2018-08-15) was purchased from Chengdu Lotus Pond Chinese Herbal Drug Market and identified as Coluria longifolia Maxim. by Prof. Guo-yue Zhong of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The whole plant of C. longifolia was dried out and then extracted with 80 % EtOH three times. After the extract was mixed with water, petroleum ether, ethyl acetate and n-butanol were added in turn for extraction. The different extracts were concentrated under vacuum to yield TE, PF, EF, NF and WF, respectively.
Bovine CII collagen and incomplete Freund's Adjuvant (IFA) were bought from Chondrex (USA); an ECL chemiluminescence kit was bought from GeneView (USA); 1 ml syringes were purchased from Becton, Dickinson Co., Ltd. (USA); a fast bench centrifuge, a constant temperature mixer, and electric pipettes were all purchased from Eppendorf (Germany); a high-speed homogenizer was purchased from IKA Co. (Germany). Pure water was prepared by Milli-Q ultra-pure water system (Millipore, France). Dexamethasone was purchased from GlpBio (Montclair, CA, USA). Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), glacial acetic acid and sodium chloride injection were purchased from Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd. (Shanghai, China), and rat serum IL-6 and TNF-α enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits were purchased from Bender (Germany).

Chloral hydrate, sodium chloride injection, normal saline, and methanol were bought from Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd. (Shanghai, China). Glycine, TRIS buffer, and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) was purchased from Sangon Biotech (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (Shanghai, China). Skim milk powder was purchased from BBI Life Sciences (Shanghai, China). 30% acrylamide and ammonium persulfate (AP) were bought from Beijing Dingguo Changsheng Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (Beijing, China). Tetramethylethylenediamine (TEMED) was provided by Sigma (St. Louis, MO, United States). GeneView (Ste. Genevieve, MO, United States) provided the enhanced chemiluminescence (ECL) Kit. The Milli-Q (18.2 MΩ) ultra-pure water system (Millipore, Billerica, MA, United States) was used to prepare pure water. Mouse serum interferon gamma (IFN-γ), IL-10, IL-12p70, IL-17A, TNF-α, IL-6, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP1), and IL-1β enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits were purchased from Bender (Gruenberg, Germany).
DF was prepared in our laboratory [Batch No.: 20180522. The DF had a rhodojaponin III content of 41.6% and a rhodojaponin VI content of 13.6%, as determined by the linear curve method (Yao et al., 2019 )]. Dexamethasone was purchased from GlpBio (Batch No.: GC40775. Montclair, CA, United States).