FIGURE 1.
VPA alleviates clinical symptoms of EAE. A–C, EAE was induced in female C57/B6 mice by immunization with MOG35–55. VPA was given once daily starting from day 3 postimmunization via intraperitoneal injection (A) or oral administration (B) or starting from day 12 by oral administration (C) until the end of the experiment, and clinical scores were recorded every day. Control groups were given oral or intraperitoneal injection of saline. The data represent the means ± S.E. (n = 10). ###, p < 0.001 (two-way ANOVA test). *, p < 0.05; **, p < 0.01; ***, p < 0.001 versus vehicle control (Mann-Whitney U test). D and E, hematoxylin and eosin staining (D) and Luxol fast blue staining (E) of paraffin sections of spinal cords isolated from naive, vehicle, or VPA-treated (300 mg/kg, orally, starting from day 3) EAE mice on day 17 after immunization. The boxed areas in the top rows are presented enlarged in the bottom row. F and G, number of CNS infiltrates in the hematoxylin- and eosin-stained sections and the area of demyelination in the Luxol fast blue stained sections are quantified. Four animals from each group were sacrificed, and 15 sections of the spinal cord of each animal were analyzed. ***, p < 0.001, versus naive control; ###, p < 0.001, versus vehicle control (Student's t test).