Figure 3.

Quantitation of mouse aorta atherosclerosis lesions as lesion area (a and c) and intimal thickness index (b). (a) Aorta luminal surface images (as shown in Fig. 2, a–f) from the six groups of mice, as indicated at the bottom of the present figure and described in Fig. 1 legend, were analyzed using an image software for total aorta luminal surface area and areas covered with lesions. The lesion area index was calculated as percentage of aortic area covered by the atherosclerotic lesions (means ± SE) as shown along the y axis. (b) The cross-sections stained with hematoxylin and eosin as described in Fig. 2, g–l, were used for measuring the lesion intimal thickness. An average of three measurements from three independent sections of the same aorta sample was used as the intimal thickness index (means ± SE) as shown along the y axis. The AR39 infection plus high-cholesterol group (n = 7) is significantly different from the high-cholesterol alone group (n = 7) in both lesion area (a; *P < 0.001) and lesion thickness (b; ^#P < 0.05). (c) Comparison of aortic lesion area index from mice sacrificed at 6 months (open columns; n = 3 for each group) vs. 9 months (hatched columns; the same data as displayed in a). For columns 1 vs. 2, 1 vs. 3, 2 vs. 4, 3 vs. 4, 5 vs. 6, and 5 vs. 7, P > 0.05; for column 3 vs. 5, P < 0.05; for columns 4 vs. 6, 6 vs. 8, and 7 vs. 8, P < 0.001.