Figure 4
Expression of TNF-α and IL-1β and quantification of apoptosis in livers of wild-type and mPGES-1-deficient mice fed a standard- or NASH-diet. Male mPGES-1+/+ (WT) or mPGES-1−/− (KO) mice received the diets for 20 weeks. (A,B) Relative mRNA and protein expression of TNF-α. (C,D) Relative mRNA and protein expression of IL-1β. Dense intensity of TNF-α (B) or IL-1β (D) was normalized to FastGreen staining, which was verified on the same Western blot membrane as a loading control and calculated relative to the group ‘WT Standard-diet’ on each gel. Original blots are provided in Supplementary Figure S4 and S5. (E,F) Quantification of hepatocyte apoptosis by TUNEL assay and immunohistochemistry staining of cleaved caspase 3 (cCaspase 3) by calculating the number of TUNEL- or cleaved caspase 3-positive cells relative to the number of hepatocyte nuclei per field in 5 randomly chosen microphotographs per liver section with 5–6 livers per group. Values are median (line), upper- and lower quartile (box) and extremes (whiskers) of 15–28 (A,C) or 7–9 (B,D) mice or 25–30 samples (E,F) per group. Statistics: Two-way-ANOVA with Tukey’s post hoc test for multiple comparisons. *p < 0.05.
