Bleomycin-Treated Chimeric Thy1-Deficient Mice with Thy1-Deficient Myofibroblasts and Thy-Positive Lymphocytes Resolve Inflammation without Affecting the Fibrotic Response

Figure 4

Assessment of the T cell population following bleomycin intratracheal instillation (IT) in wild-type mice (WT) (control) with Thy1⁺ lymphocytes and Thy1⁺ myofibroblasts, and chimeric Thy1-deficient mice with Thy1⁺ lymphocytes and Thy1⁻ myofibroblasts. Chimeric Thy1-deficient mice were created by total body irradiation (750 rad) of Thy1-deficient mice, followed by transplantation with WT Thy1⁺ lymphoid cells. For comparison, wild-type (WT) mice were irradiated and had adoptive transfer with Thy1⁺ (WT) lymphoid cells. (A1 and A2) Immunofluorescence of CD4⁺/CD25⁺, and (B1 and B2) CD8 staining of mouse lung sections 14 d following IT bleomycin in chimeric Thy1-deficient mice (empty bars) and control WT mice (grey bars). N 6 = 5 WT and 8 chimeric Thy1-deficient. (A1) Nomarski microscopy pictures of CD4/CD25 (yellow) (), and (B1) CD8 (green) staining are presented. (A2 and B2) 10 fields of every immunofluorescence slide were digitized and semiquantitatively analyzed using the Ariol system. The relative staining ratio represents the ratio between numbers of stained and unstained cells in a certain analyzed are. The results were similar in 2 different experiments.

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