Table 2.

Quantitative immunohistochemical staining for apoptosis. Greater cleaved caspase-3 staining was observed for quercetin-RF, RF-doxorubicin, and quercetin-RF-doxorubicin at 4 h, compared to RF alone (for both rim thickness and percentage of stained cells/hpf for all comparisons, P < 0.04 for all comparisons). At 24 h, cleaved caspase-3 expression decreased in all groups (P < 0.001). Quercetin-RF and RF-doxorubicin had comparatively greater cleaved caspase-3 expression than RF alone (for percentage of stained cells/hpf, P < 0.05). Triple therapy with quercetin-RF-doxorubicin had a similar positive cell percentage (45.1 ± 10.8%), to RF-doxorubicin, and was significantly greater compared with other groups (P < 0.03).

	4 h		24 h
Groups Quercetin alone	Thickness (mm) No rim identified	Cell percentage (%) No rim identified	Thickness (mm) No rim identified	Cell percentage (%) No rim identified
RF alone	0.35 ± 0.18	41.9 ± 15.1	0.26 ± 0.09	33.2 ± 6.5
Quercetin-RF	0.48 ± 0.19	50.7 ± 13.4	0.28 ± 0.08	37.4 ± 7.8
RF-doxorubicin	0.49 ± 0.10	56.7 ± 10.5	0.31 ± 0.10	42.4 ± 15.3
Quercetin-RF-doxorubicin	0.48 ± 0.08	51.2 ± 12.4	0.24 ± 0.07	45.1 ± 10.7