Characterisation of Pain Responses in the High Fat Diet/Streptozotocin Model of Diabetes and the Analgesic Effects of Antidiabetic Treatments

Figure 4

Effects of the HFD/STZ model on Iba-1 and GFAP staining in the spinal cord. ((a)–(c)) Representative images of Iba-1 staining in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord in a Lean/Veh, HFD/Veh, and HFD/STZ rat, from left to right. Scale bar: 50 μm (20x magnification). Arrows indicate examples of Iba-1 positive cells morphologically identified as activated microglia. (d) Numbers of Iba-1 positive cells morphologically identified as activated microglia in the dorsal horn of the control groups (lean/vehicle and HFD/vehicle). (e) Effects of HFD/STZ on number of Iba-1 positive cells morphologically identified as activated microglia in the dorsal horn expressed as a percentage of the number in the Lean/Veh control group. The numbers of rats per group are shown below the -axis, and 7 spinal cord sections per rat were processed. Data are mean ± SEM. Analysis was by a Mann-Whitney test: . ((f)–(h)) Representative images of GFAP staining in the ventral horn of the spinal cord in a Lean/Veh, HFD/Veh, and HFD/STZ rat, from left to right. Scale bar: 50 μm (20x magnification). Effects of HFD/STZ on mean grey intensity of spinal GFAP immunofluorescence in (i) the dorsal horn and (j) the ventral horn, expressed as a percentage of the mean grey intensity in the Lean/Veh control group. The number of rats per group is shown below the -axis, and 7 spinal cord sections per rat were processed. Data are mean ± SEM, analysis was by a Mann-Whitney test: , .

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