Fig. 2: Lacrimal SNS activation in response to dry eye stimuli.

a Schematic diagram of dry eye mouse model. Created in BioRender. Wang, Q. (2025) https://BioRender.com/vuq9hqj. Adult C57BL/6 J mice were treated with chronic desiccating stress and scopolamine injection (SCOP, 0.5 mg/0.2 ml, three times per day) for 7 days. b Changes of tear secretion (n = 8 mice per group. 3 d P = 0.0003, 7 d P < 0.0001). c Changes of corneal fluorescein staining (n = 8 mice per group. 3 d P = 0.0132, 7 d P < 0.0001). d Representative images of immunolabelling using anti-TH and anti-c-FOS and quantitative analysis of SCG neurons after 2 h of scopolamine injection (n = 6 mice per group. P < 0.0001). Scale bar, 50 μm. e Representative patch-clamp recording and quantification of action potential frequency of retrogradely-labeled SCG neurons from lacrimal gland after 2 h of scopolamine injection (Ctrl: n = 6 cells, SCOP: n = 8 cells. P = 0.0353). f NA (n = 5 mice per group. P = 0.0031) and ACh (n = 4 mice per group. P = 0.0251) concentrations of lacrimal glands. g Representative images of immunolabelling using anti-TH in lacrimal gland (n = 3 mice per group. P = 0.0151). Scale bar, 200 μm. h Quantitative PCR analysis (n = 3 mice per group. Ngf P = 0.0022, Gdnf P = 0.0046). Data are shown as mean ± SEM. The significance of differences was detected using unpaired two-sided Student’s t test (b, d, f, g, h), two-sided Mann-Whitney U test (e), and one-way ANOVA followed by Dunnett’s test (c), *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.