Figure 2

Effect on adenoma burden in the small intestine of ApcMin/+ mice of aspirin (‘asp’, 0.05% in the diet, open bar) or curcumin (‘curc’, 0.2% in the diet) administered in utero and during weaning (‘preweaning’, bar striped diagonally bottom left to top right), or of curcumin administered postweaning to the end of the lifetime (‘postweaning’, bar striped diagonally top left to bottom right), or of the combination of aspirin in utero and during weaning followed by curcumin postweaning (black bar). Adenoma burden is expressed as percentage of number of adenomas in untreated mice, the number of mice used per group was eight to 10. The value for the effect of curcumin postweaning (bar striped diagonally top left to bottom right) was obtained previously (Perkins et al, 2002) and has been included for comparison; this experiment was not repeated here to minimise animal usage. The results originate from three separate experiments, and number of intestinal adenomas in the control (untreated) groups were as follows: experiment described by open and black bars: 132±12, experiment described by bar diagonally striped bottom left to top right: 117±13, experiment described by bar striped diagonally top left to bottom right: 115±12. The s.d.s of adenoma number values for the different interventions are 12% of the mean, or smaller. Asterisk indicates that the number of adenomas is significantly different from that in control (untreated) animals (P<0.05). For details of animals and treatments and statistical evaluation, see Materials and Methods.