Figure 2.

Effect of dietary abscisic acid (ABA)-supplementation on weight loss (A), survival rates (B), and lung viral loads(C) following infection with influenza virus. Wild-type (WT) or immune/epithelial cell-specific PPAR γ null mice (cKO) mice were fed either a control or an ABA-supplemented diet (100 mg/ABA kg of diet) for 36 days and then challenged with 5 × 10⁴ tissue culture infectious dose 50 (TCID₅₀) of influenza A/Udorn (H3N2). Body weight results indicate that ABA treatment prevented weight loss associated with influenza virus infection in the WT but not in the cKO mice, suggesting a PPAR γ-dependent mechanism of action (A). A similar beneficial pattern was observed in the survival rates for the ABA-treated mice (B). For the weight loss data, Asterisks denote statistically significant differences between the ABA-treated WT and the myeloid KO mice. Pound signs denote statistically significant differences between the ABA-treated WT and the control WT (n=10 mice per treatment and genotype). These effects were not associated to differences in lung viral load due to ABA treatment on day 4 post-infection (C).