Fig. 9. Effect of Tarp immunization on the development of inflammatory pathologies in the mouse urogenital tract following chlamydial infection.

Sixty days after MoPn infection, mice were sacrificed for pathology observation. (A) The urogenital tract tissues from mice immunized with adjuvant alone (panel a), adjuvant + Tarp (b) or adjuvant + MoPn (c) were examined at the level of gross appearance. Mice with hydrosalpinx in only one (unilateral) or both (bilateral) oviducts were identified and listed in the chart at the bottom of the figure. The incidence of hydrosalpinx was compared between different groups using the Chi-Test and as indicated in the figure, Tarp immunization significantly reduced the rate of bilateral hydrosalpinx comparing to the adjuvant alone group (33% vs. 70%, p<0.05). (B) The urogenital tract tissues were sectioned for microscopic observation of inflammatory pathologies. Representative H&E stained section images covering either the uterine horn (panels a–c) or fallopian tube (d–f) regions were presented from each group of mice. The location of lumen and examples of inflammatory cell infiltration were indicated. Each section was scored for both lumenal dilatation and inflammatory infiltration and the semi-quantitation results were displayed in (C). Inflammation (panel a) and dilatation (panel b) scores assigned to individual mice were used to calculate the means and standard errors for each group as shown along the Y-axis. The mouse and tissue groups were indicated along the X-axis. Solid bar indicates tissue samples from adjuvant alone (n=10), hatched bar for adjuvant + Tarp (n=9) and open bar for adjuvant + MoPn (n=10) groups. ANOVA test was used to analyze differences among different groups and a two-tailed Student t Test for analyzing the differences between Tarp- or MoPn-immunized and adjuvant alone groups. Note that Tarp immunization significantly reduced both the inflammation and lumen dilatation scores in the fallopian tube tissues.