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Ethnopharmacological relevance: Pinellia ternata (Thunb.) Breit.(Araceae) has been widely used as a traditional herbal medicine for the treatment of excessive phlegm and vomit.The raw material has throat-irritating toxicity, which can be sharply alleviated by being immersed in alum solution or boiled for a long time.Such toxicity is related with Pinellia ternata lectin (PTL).PTL is a monocot lectin isolated from the tubers of P.ternata,which exhibits mouse peritoneal acute inflammatory effects in vivo.Such pro-inflammatory effects exist as massive neutrophil recruitment.The aim of this study was to investigate the pro-inflammatory effect of PTL on resident macrophages and its role in neutrophil recruitment.Materials and methods: Macrophage culture was used to evaluate the pro-inflammatory effects of PTL, and in vitro neutrophil chemotaxis assay was used to study the cellular mechanism of PTL-induced pro-inflammatory activity.Macrophages were also stimulated with different doses of PTL to evaluate the effects of PTL on ROS overproduction.Scanning electron microscopy was used to observe the surface morphological changes of resident macrophages.Results: Cultured macrophages were treated with PTL, and cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6) were released significantly in a dose-dependent manner.The levels of PTL (100 μg/mL)-induced cytokine releases increased significantly 1.5 h after stimulation,then peaked at 3 h, and gradually returned to control level.PTL-stimulated macrophages enhanced the chemotactic activity of neutrophils.Increasing the dose of PTL significantly elevated intracellular ROS production.SEM images showed severe cell swelling and membrane integrity defection after PTL stimulation, which also was related with inflammation.Conclusion: PTL had pro-inflammatory activity, involving induced cytokine release and necrosis-like cell damages as well as enhanced neutrophil migration, which may be related with the activation of resident macrophages.