Fig. 3

Hypoxia inducible factor (HIF)-1α mRNA expression under pressure and MTX treatment. A HIF-1α mRNA expression was reduced under pressure (n ≥ 15, *** p < 0.001, unpaired t-test) B HIF-1α mRNA expression was not influenced by MTX treatment (n > 9, ns, one-way ANOVA) C Mechanical stress reduced HIF-1α mRNA expression over time since there was no reduction at 4 or 12 h, this change occurred only at 24 h (n = 3, * p < 0.05, one-way ANOVA). The values are presented as the mean ± SEM. For gene expression analysis, the ΔΔCtq method was used [36]. As a housekeeping gene, RPL22 was used because it works quite well for compression studies [11, 37]