IL6 and acute respiratory distress syndrome: The performed experiments clearly demonstrated that STS significantly ameliorated the lipopolysaccharide-induced interleukin-6 elevation in the serum in both groups of rats where STS was administrated either before or after LPS challenge (IL-6 (pg/mL), 386 ± 167 ARDS control (n = 4) includes LPS-treated rats; 64 ± 25 ARDS+STS1 group (n = 5) includes rats treated with STS before LPS, 48 ± 14 ARDS + STS2 group includes rats treated with STS after LPS challenge (n = 5), Figure 3A.