Figure 1. Fish oil attenuates CCl₄-induced liver fibrosis in vivo.

Mice were treated with normal diet (control), fish oil diet (fish oil), injected with CCl₄ (CCl₄) or injected with CCl₄ combined with fish oil diet treatment (fish oil/CCl₄) on postnatal week 8. Liver tissues were used for analysis. (a) The liver histology was examined by means of macroscopic morphology, HE staining and sirius red staining. α-SMA and collagen1 signals were visualized by immunohistochemistry. (b) α-SMA and collagen1 signals were examined and quantified by western blot. GAPDH served as the loading control. The gels were cropped and the full-length gels are presented in Supplementary Fig. 5. (c,d) Total RNA from liver tissue in control, fish oil, CCl₄ and fish oil/CCl₄ mice was isolated and subsequently used for the detection of the mRNA of α-SMA (c) and collagen1α1 (d) by real-time PCR analysis. (e) The content of hydroxyproline was detected by commercially available hydroxyproline detection kits. The data are expressed as the mean ± SEM for triplicate experiments. *P < 0.05.