Fig. 6: Antioxidant treatment partially rescues neonates but not adults from influenza-mediated mortality.
From: Severity of neonatal influenza infection is driven by type I interferon and oxidative stress
To determine if exogenous antioxidant could rescue neonatal and adult animals from oxidative stress imbalance-mediated mortality, animals were treated with 150 mg/kg of a pharmaceutical grade antioxidant, N-acetylcysteine (Acetadote) or sham at indicated time points (a, c and e) and tracked for survival (neonates, b and d) or weight loss (adults, f). Treatment with Acetadote partially rescues neonatal mice from influenza-mediated mortality when started prophylactically (a and b); Acetadote (dashed line) (n = 29), sham (solid line) (n = 27) 6 independent experiments. When Acetadote is started post-infection (c and d), there is improved survival; Acetadote (solid line) (n = 18), sham (dashed line) (n = 9) 4 independent experiments. In contrast, adults given the same weight-adjusted dose of NAC have no improvement in morbidity as demonstrated by similar weight loss kinetics (b and f), NAC (black circle) (n = 5, 3 males and 2 females), PBS (open circle) (n = 5, 3 males and 2 females), 2 independent experiments. Statistical differences between treated and control animals’ survival on Kaplan Meier survival curve was assessed by using log-rank (Mantel–Cox) test, where denoted *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01.
