Fig. 4: Drug efficacy assessments with rats.
A An overview of a multi-week evaluation of drug efficacy with three types of models, including wild-type (WT), ALS group (ALS), and drug (Edaravone) treated ALS group (ALS + Drug). The sensor-enabled muscle activity monitoring starts at week 18. Measured swallowing EMG signals which are presented by normalized EMG amplitude of the ALS group rats (SODG93A) at the (B) masseter and (C) digastric muscle areas, respectively, at week 18, before ALS manifestation. D, E Measured swallowing EMG signals from the same group in (B, C) at week 26 after ALS manifestation, showing significant reduction of muscle activities. Normalized muscle activity changes from three groups, including WT (n = 6), ALS (n = 4), and ALS + Drug (n = 6) at the (F) masseter (G) digastric muscle areas, capturing that the signals of the ALS+Drug group are a lot higher than the ALS group. The results indicate a clear therapeutic effect of the drug (Edaravone) on delaying bulbar muscle activity decline. Data are presented as mean values with the standard error of the mean. Two-way ANOVA with Tukey’s multiple comparison test analyzes these data; *p < 0.05 and **p < 0.01 compared to wild-type. For digastric muscles, p-values comparing WT vs ALS at 24, 25, and 26 weeks are 0.01, <0.0001, and <0.0001, respectively. p-values comparing WT vs ALSD at 24, 25, and 26 weeks are 0.0103, 0.0095, and 0.0108, respectively. For masseter muscles, p-values comparing WT vs ALS at 22, 23, 24, 25, and 26 weeks are 0.0108, 0.0239, 0.0006, 0.0003, and 0.0006, respectively. p-values comparing WT vs ALSD at 25, and 26 weeks are 0.0272 and 0.0193, respectively. The inset graphs in (F, G) represent the comparison of muscle activity of each group between weeks 18-19 and weeks 26-27. The individual dot indicates data from each animal on each week. P-values are presented on the tip of comparison pairs. Data are presented as mean values with the standard error of the mean.
