Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Int J Dev Neurosci. 2013 Mar 7;31(4):258–266. doi: 10.1016/j.ijdevneu.2013.02.009

Figure 3. Density of Caspase-3 Immunoreactive Cell in Newborn Rat at Postnatal Day 7 (PD7).

Figure 3

Graph illustrates average density of apoptotic cells (#caspase-3 cell/section/brain) ± SD among three treatment groups (naïve, normal saline (control), and morphine (tolerant) group) in five different anatomical regions of interest. There are no differences in density between naïve and control groups in any of the regions analyzed. Morphine treatment was associated with increased density of apoptotic cells only in the cortex (F(2,15)=5.82; p=0.013) and amygdala (F(2,13)=5.84; p=0.006) of newborn rats. Pairwise comparisons of all groups showed statistically significant increase in density of caspase-3 immunoreactive cells in tolerant group compared to naïve (p<0.05) and control groups (p<0.05 for cortex; p<0.01 for amygdala). We found no statistical difference in density of apoptotic cells in hippocampus (F(2,13)=0.47, p=0.63), hypothalamus (F(2,10)=1.68; p=0.23), and periaqueductal gray (PAG; F(2,12)=0.34, p=0.71) among different treatments. For schematic representation of anatomical regions of analysis, refer to Fig. 2. One-way ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc test. Asterisks (*) denote statistically significant increase in values.