Glucocorticoids are the most effective anti-inflammatory drugs used in the treatment of inflammatory diseases. While phosphorylation of historic H3 at serine 10 (p-Ser10) is one of the histone modifications related to transcription of some inflammation-related genes, the effect of glucocorticoids on p-Ser10 is not established. Here, we investigated the ability of dexamethasone (Dex) to inhibit p-Ser10 expression in response to tumor necrosis factor TNF-alpha in the human lung adenocarcinoma cell line A549 and the SV-40-transformed human airway epithelial cell line BEAS-2B. By Western blot analysis in BEAS-2B cells, the expression of p-Ser10 was repressed by pretreatment with Dex, an effect not seen in A549 cells. Flow cytometric analysis at a single-cell level in A549 cells indicated that TNF-alpha treatment caused early induction of p-Ser10 at 15 min, which was inhibited significantly by pretreatment with 10(-5) M Dex. By immunostaining, the p-Ser10 signal appeared as granules in TNF-alpha-treated cells at same sites of phosphorylated RNA polymerase II. In contrast, the signal was scattered in the nuclei of Dex-pretreated cells. These findings suggested that Dex limits airway inflammation by inhibiting p-Ser10 expression and redistributing p-Ser10 away from transcription sites. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.