Cadmium is a toxic metal that can be inhaled via particulate
matter and cigarette smoke. Most of the studies on cadmium have
focused on its toxicity and there have been even fewer studies on
its inflammatory properties. Therefore we investigated the effect of
subcytotoxic doses of cadmium on production of inflammatory
cytokines by human airway epithelial cells. Here we show that
the antioxidant curcumin, a natural inhibitor of NF-jB, can prevent
the release of both IL-6 and IL-8 by airway epithelial cells in response
to the toxic metal cadmium.