Fig. 5: Collagen fiber bundling in the aorta of female and male SD rats in response to HLU.

Clear bars indicate control animals; checkered bars indicate rats exposed to hindlimb unloading (HLU). Picrosirius red stained slides were imaged with polarized light, and the pixel values of representative regions were binned into red, orange, yellow, and green hues, corresponding to a respective decrease in collagen bundling. The data are presented as a ratio of the number of pixels of each color category over the total across all color categories per group. Data are mean ± SEM, n = 4–7; *p < 0.05 versus Control Female.