Figure 3: Effect of 50%HA on oxaliplatin-dependent damages of the peripheral nervous system.

The protective effect of 50%HA was evaluated on the sciatic nerve and in DRGs of treated animals on day 21. (A) p-NF-H expression levels in sciatic nerve. A representative immunohistochemical staining for p-NF-H in 10 μm longitudinal sciatic nerve sections is shown. For all images the scale bar = 10 μm and the original magnification was 20X. Bars show quantitative evaluation of neurofilament expression levels obtained by densitometric analysis. (B) Morphological aspects of DRG nuclei and nucleoli. The protective effect of repeated administrations of 50%HA was evaluated on oxaliplatin-damaged DRGs on day 21. Five μm DRG sections were stained by the Azan-Mallory method. Light micrographs (for all images: scale bar = 5 μm, original magnification 40X) were analyzed by measuring the occurrence of eccentric nucleoli (black arrowhead) and multinucleolated neurons (black arrow). Histograms show the incidence of nuclear and nucleolar pathological features in the absence (black bars) and in the presence of 50%HA (grey bars). (C) ATF-3 expression in L4-L5 DRGs. Typical immunohistochemistry images of ATF-3 expression in the DRG following oxaliplatin (oxaliplatin + vehicle) and oxaliplatin combined with 50%HA (oxaliplatin + 50%HA) treatments (day 21). ATF-3 staining is clearly punctuate and confined to the nucleus, shown as intense compact staining in brown (black arrows). The percentage of ATF-3-positive neurons in L4 and L5 DRGs is shown in the histogram. All images: scale bar = 10 μm, original magnification 20X. Each value represents the mean ± SEM of 6 rats per group, performed in two different experimental sets. *P < 0.05 versus vehicle + vehicle; ^P < 0.05 and ^^P < 0.01 versus oxaliplatin + vehicle.