Acute Neuroinflammatory Response in the Substantia Nigra Pars Compacta of Rats after a Local Injection of Lipopolysaccharide

Figure 4

Time course of astrocyte activation. (a) A representative photograph of a Western blot membrane showing the electrophoretic fractionation of GFAP and β-actin from substantia nigra homogenates of LPS-treated rats and untreated (Ut) control rats. The numbers indicate the time of evaluation. (b) Graph of densitometry analysis showing the normalized values of GFAP bands with respect to β-actin bands. The values represent the mean ± SD ( independent rats for each time of each experimental condition). when compared with the untreated control group using repeated-measures one-way ANOVA and Newman-Keuls post hoc test. (c) Representative micrographs of the double immunofluorescence of GFAP and TH in the substantia nigra of untreated (Ut) control rats and rats at different times after LPS injection that were taken at 3.7 mm from the interaural midpoint on the dorsal-ventral axis of the rat brain atlas by Paxinos and Watson [50]. The numbers at the left side of micrographs indicate the time of evaluation. Immunofluorescence (IF) area density for TH (d) and GFAP (e) was determined using ImageJ software v.1.46r (National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD). The TH and GFAP values for the mock rats correspond to the quantification in Supplementary Figure 2. All values represent the mean ± SD ( independent rats in each time and each experimental condition). when compared with the untreated control group of the respective immunostaining. when compared with the respective mock group. Repeated-measures two-way ANOVA and Bonferroni post hoc test.

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