Fig. 2.

AKK and pAKK treatment alleviated S. Typhimurium infection in mice. (A) Experimental design. After the 14-day intervention, C57BL/6 mice were orally gavaged with streptomycin, then challenged with 10⁷ CFU/100 μL of S. Typhimurium SL1344. Here are two parts of the experiment. One part of the mice was sacrificed on day 23 for monitoring the trend of weight change and fecal shedding of pathogens, and the other part of the mice was sacrificed on day 19 for the determination of organ and tissue bacterial burdens and histopathology analysis. (B) Weight loss and (C) S. Typhimurium shedding in feces. S. Typhimurium burdens in tissues or intestinal contents, including (D) liver, (E) spleen, (F) kidney, (G) MLN, (H) SI, (I) cecal content, (J) colon, and (K) colon content. (L) Representative image of colon (left) and colon length (right). (M) Representative H&E stained cecal sections of mice (left) and associated histopathological scores after infection (right). Images were taken at × 10 magnification. (N) AB/PAS stained cecal sections of mice (left) and the number of goblet cells per crypt (right). Images were taken at × 10 magnification. B-C: n = 6, D-N: n = 7 ∼ 10. Statistical significance was determined by ANOVA or Kruskal-Wallis test for multiple comparisons, and post-hoc Tukey test or Mann-Whitney test for comparisons between two groups. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, and ***p < 0.001.