Fig. 1: Maternal asthma worsens offspring lung inflammation in an antigen-non-specific manner.

a Model of chronic maternal asthma during pregnancy: Female mice were sensitized twice with vehicle (PBS) or ovalbumin (OVA), then mated and treated intranasally with PBS or OVA intermittently from day 4 to day 17 of gestation. The adult offspring were intranasally treated with PBS or house dust mite (HDM) for 5 consecutive days at 7–9 weeks of age and subsequently analyzed. b Changes in the number of immune cells in the lungs of adult offspring of asthmatic or control mothers. c Assessment of acetylcholine-induced airway hyperresponsiveness in adult offspring of asthmatic or control mothers. d The log of the dose of acetylcholine required for a 150% increase in airway pressure over the baseline (log PC150 in mg/mL) was calculated for each mouse. e H&E staining of lung tissues (bar, 100 µm) and Inflammation scores. In (b–e), data were pooled from three independent experiments (b), each experiment with one or two pregnant dams, or four independent experiments (c, d), each experiment with two pregnant dams. In (e), data were from one experiment, with two or three pregnant dams per group. Sample sizes were as follows: b PBS-PBS: n = 6, OVA-PBS: n = 6, PBS-HDM: n = 19, OVA-HDM: n = 19; c, d PBS-PBS: n = 5, OVA-PBS: n = 4, PBS-HDM: n = 15, OVA-HDM: n = 16; e PBS-HDM: n = 4, OVA-HDM: n = 5. In (b, d, e), each dot represents an individual mouse. In (b–e), data are presented as the mean ± SEM. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001; ns, not significant [unpaired two-tailed Student’s t-test in (b, d, e) and two-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s test in (c)].