Figure 6.

Telmisartan ester (TS-S) prevents the onset of meningitis in a newborn mouse model. A, Synthesis of a water-soluble derivative of TS, TS-S, by an esterification process is shown. B, Three-day-old C57BL/6J mouse pups were infected with 10³ colony-forming units of Escherichia coli in the presence or absence of TS-S, as mentioned in the Methods section. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples collected through lumbar puncture were cultured in LB plus rifampicin and incubated overnight. Bacterial growth in CSF cultures was considered positive for meningitis. The asterisk indicates that no bacterial growth was observed in the CSF of any of the pups in all 3 experiments. The experiments were performed 3 times with at least 5 pups per group for each experiment. C, Brain sections of control, TS-S control, E. coli–infected and TS-S–treated/infected pups were subjected to hematoxylin-eosin (H&E) staining for morphological analysis, MPO staining for analysis of neutrophil migration, and GFAP staining for analysis of glial cell migration. Arrows indicate gross morphological changes and neutrophil and glial cell migration in the brains of E. coli–infected pups. Bar, 100 µm.