Fig. 2. S. salivarius exacerbates pathophysiology of AR in a mouse model.
a, Mouse model of AR. 2 × 106 CFU S. salivarius was instilled into the nares of C57BL/6J mice (n=12/group) once daily for 3 days. One hour later, 20 μl of A. alternata extract (50 μg per mouse) or vehicle (20 μl of 0.1% BSA in PBS) was instilled. Control animals were sham infected with PBS alone. All mice were sacrificed one hour after their last intranasal treatment. The nasal mucosa was collected, homogenized and used for RNA extraction. b, Cytokine expression in harvested nasal mucosal tissue. c, Thickness of the nasal epithelium as determined by histological examination. d, Examples of histological assessment of nasal epithelia. e, Example picture of nose histology with the approximate location where pictures for the examination shown in panels c and d were taken. Dotted arrows show extension of the epithelium. b,c, Statistical analysis is by 1-way ANOVAs with Tukey’s post-tests. *, p<0.05; **, p <0.01; ***, p <0.001; ****, p <0.0001. Error bars show the mean ± SD. This experiment was repeated in its entirety with cytokine expression and epithelial thickness results showing similar results (Extended Data Fig. 9).