Fig. 7: Morphometric and functional analysis of skeletal muscles of nude mice following adult thymus transplantation.

Representative H&E and AM staining of QA muscles of nu^PBS, Tnu^MDX and Tnu^C57Bl mice (a). Quantification of the necrotic myofibers, fibrotic areas (b) and centrally nucleated myofibers (c) of the QA muscles of nu^PBS, Tnu^MDX and Tnu^C57Bl mice. Boxes indicate 25th to 75th percentiles; whiskers indicate 5th to 95th percentiles; and the line indicates the median. Quantification of the relative frequency of the myofiber cross-sectional area (CSA) expressed as the frequency distribution of the QA (d) and TA (e) muscles of the nu^PBS, Tnu^MDX and Tnu^C57Bl mice. Boxes indicate 25th to 75th percentiles; whiskers indicate 5th to 95th percentiles; and the line indicates the median. For morphometric analysis, images were quantified with ImageJ software for each mouse (a–e). Tetanic force of TA of C57Bl, mdx, nu^PBS, Tnu^MDX and Tnu^C57Bl mice is shown in f. Scale bar: 200 μm (a). The comparisons among the averages of the groups were evaluated using one-way ANOVA (b–f) and F-test to compare variance (d, e). b ***p = 0.0003 Tnu^MDX vs Tnu^C57Bl and *p = 0.0207 Tnu^MDX vs nu^PBS mice for necrotic fibres/section; ****p < 0.0001 for fibrotic area. c *p = 0.0455 Tnu^MDX vs Tnu^C57Bl and ***p = 0.0001 Tnu^MDX vs nu^PBS mice. d–f ****p < 0.0001. Data are presented as mean ± SD of three independent experiments with n = 8 mice/group (a); n = 8 mice Tnu^C57Bl, n = 9 mice Tnu^MDX and n = 8 mice nu^PBS (b, c); n = 4 (d, e); n = 3 mice Tnu^C57Bl, n = 3 mice Tnu^MDX and n = 3 mice nu^PBS, n = 4 C57Bl and n = 4 mdx mice (f) mice/group. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.