Figure 5

Histology of the ELG plus ILG excised C57BL/6 mice at 4- and 8-weeks after surgery, and ELG excised C57BL/6 mice at 8-weeks after surgery. Examination of the H&E-stained sections revealed significant severe inflammatory changes such as cell infiltration (A,E; yellow arrows), and neovascularization (A,E; yellow arrowheads) in the corneas of the ELG plus ILG excised mice at 4- and 8-weeks postoperatively. Moreover, significant inflammatory cell infiltration into the mucosal and submucosal layers (C,G; arrows), as well as conjunctival epithelial hyperplasia (C,G; asterisks), was observed in the conjunctiva of those mice. In particular, the palpebral conjunctival epithelium at 8-weeks postoperative (G; asterisk) was significantly thicker compared with that of sham-surgery control (H). Inflammatory cell infiltration was also observed in deeper area of the palpebral conjunctiva and around the meibomian gland (C,G; double asterisks). These histological changes became more advanced at 8 weeks (E,G) compared with 4 weeks postoperatively (A,C). No significant histological changes, compared with unoperated controls (not shown) were observed in the sham-surgery control eyes (B,D,F,H). In like manner, minimal inflammatory cell infiltration (i.e., categorized as a normal level) was observed in the submucosa of conjunctiva (K; arrow) in ELG only excised mice at 8-weeks after surgery, and no significant histological changes was observed in the cornea (I). In addition, no significant histological changes were observed in the untreated control eyes (J,L). Insertion to lower left of each figure (A,C,E,G,I,K) show 4 times magnification of original figures. Scale bar = 50 µm.