Figure 3
Lung histopathological stains reveal that imiquimod ameliorates IAV-induced lung injury. Haematoxylin and eosin stained paraffin lung sections from naïve mice (vehicle; PBS) treated with (A) PBS or (B) Imiquimod or mice infected with Hk x-31 at 105 PFU/mouse, with daily intranasal treatments of either (C) PBS or (D) imiquimod (50 µg) starting 1 day prior to infection up until day 2 with analysis occurring at day 3 post-infection. Green arrow indicates small airway; blue arrow indicates large airway, where n = 6–8. Scale bars represent 3 mm in the overview and 400 µm for the zoomed images. (E) Each sample was scored blindly from 0–5 for each individual mouse (higher numbers indicate increased disease severity) from two independent assessors. Sections were scored for alveolitis, inflammatory cell infiltrate and peribronchiolar inflammation, with statistical analysis conducted via a one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s post hoc test for multiple comparisons. **, *** and **** indicates p < 0.01, p < 0.001 and p < 0.0001, respectively.
