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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 Oct 15.
Published in final edited form as: Biol Psychiatry. 2009 Jul 3;66(8):785–794. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.05.021

Figure 1. Ethanol withdrawal causes upregulation of tPA activity and triggers cell death in the hippocampus.

Figure 1

Wild-type mice were sacrificed after 14 days of EtOH administration or six hours to two days after ethanol withdrawal (EW). EtOH-naïve mice served as controls. The brains were collected and in situ zymography was performed. Ethanol administration caused an upregulation of tPA activity in the hippocampus (dark lytic zones in the upper panels), which was even more dramatic after EW. The correlation between tPA levels and cell loss was determined by counting cell number in the CA1 and CA3 region of the hippocampus using DAPI-stained sections (middle panels). 14 days of EtOH administration (14d) or six hours of EW (6h) did not affect the number of cells in the CA1 or CA3 as compared to EtOH-naïve animals (shown as 0 days). However, a 14% decrease was observed two days after EW in the CA1 region (lower panels). * p<0.05; n=3-4 per time-point. The results are presented as mean ± SEM.