Follistatin, an Activin Antagonist, Ameliorates Renal Interstitial Fibrosis in a Rat Model of Unilateral Ureteral Obstruction

<table>Effects of follistatin on cell proliferation in kidneys after UUO. (a) BrdU was intraperitoneally injected into UUO rats at 1 h before sacrifice. Cell proliferation was assessed by BrdU incorporation. (A) Contralateral kidneys, 3 days. UUO kidneys, 3 days. Magnification: ×200 (A, B), ×1000 (C, D). BrdU-positive nuclei (brown). (b), (c) Quantitative analysis of the number of tubular (b) and interstitial (c) BrdU-positive cells. BrdU-positive cells in the tubules and interstitium of the kidneys were separately counted in 10 randomly selected fields per rat at ×400 magnification. Values are mean ± SE (<svg height="10.925" id="M11" style="vertical-align:-0.17555pt" version="1.1" viewbox="0 0 36.237499 10.925" width="36.237499" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
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</svg> versus saline. N.S., not significant.</table>

BioMed Research International

fig3

Figure 3

Figure 3: Follistatin, an Activin Antagonist, Ameliorates Renal Interstitial Fibrosis in a Rat Model of Unilateral Ureteral Obstruction 