Since the literature shows that IL-8 induces or enhances
the expression of COX-2 (Maloney et al., 1998; Smith et al.,
1996) and BbV induces IL-8, we suggest that the chemokine
found in this study may contribute to signaling the induction
of COX-2 expression and the release of PGE2. Therefore
we conducted experiments in order to verify the effect of
BbV on PGE2 production by human neutrophils. After 4 h of
incubation the venom significantly stimulated the human
neutrophils to produce PGE2 compared to both controls.
BbV induced a significant release of PGE2 indicating that
BbV is able to stimulate neutrophils to induce COX-2
expression. In addition to our data, the literature shows
that B. asper venom induced the release of PGE2 by mice
neutrophils (Moreira et al., 2009). In this report, Moreira
et al. (2009) showed that in neutrophils there is a tight
correlation between the profiles of COX-2 expression and
PGE2 release, suggesting that COX-2 is a key isoform for the
production of PGE2 in these cells.