SMAD3 and Sepsis: Xu et al. (2013) also investigated the effect of curcumin, intraperitoneal injection at 200 mg/kg, on sepsis-induced acute lung injury in a rat model. Real-time PCR and Western blot analysis revealed that curcumin significantly reduced the expression of TGF-β1 and SMAD3-dependent signaling pathway compared to control groups (p < .05).