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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Jul 21.
Published in final edited form as: Brain Behav Immun. 2015 Jul 26;50:249–258. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2015.07.022

Fig. 7.

Fig. 7

Dendritic spine impairments in MIA offspring persist into adulthood and are correlated with increased marble burying. (a) Layer 5 pyramidal neuron apical tuft dendrites from 3 month old control + vehicle, control + ibudilast, MIA + vehicle and MIA + ibudilast offspring mice treated during the first 2 postnatal weeks. (b) Two-way ANOVA was first used to test for the presence of interaction between drug treatment and experimental groups. This revealed an interaction consistent with the observation that ibudilast increased dendritic spine density in the MIA offspring but had no effect on the controls F(1, 19) = 4.62, P = 0.04. Post hoc two-way ANOVA with Bonferroni's correction indicates that a reduction in spine density in MIA + vehicle offspring persists into adulthood (control + vehicle: 0.85 ± 0.07 spines/micron, n = 6 mice; MIA + vehicle: 0.58 ± 0.05 spines/micron, n = 6 mice, P = 0.04) but is not prevented by postnatal treatment with the anti-inflammatory drug ibudilast (MIA + ibudilast: 0.77 ± 0.09 spines/micron, n = 6 mice, MIA + vehicle: 0.58 ± 0.05 spines/micron, n = 6 mice, P = 0.25). No changes in spines density in control + ibudilast offspring (control + vehicle: 0.85 ± 0.07 spines/micron, n = 6 mice; control + ibudilast: 0.77 ± 0.04 spines/micron, n = 5 mice, P > 0.9). (c) Marble burying is increased in MIA offspring and this increase is prevented by postnatal ibudilast treatment. There was a main effect of prenatal treatment, F(1,67) = 16.99, P = 0.0001, as well as a main effect of drug treatment, F(1,67) = 14.37, P = 0.0003 on marble burying but no significant interaction F(1,67) = 0.5, P = 0.48. Marble burying increased in MIA offspring (control + veh: 37.7 ± 3.3%, n = 18 mice from 4 litters; MIA + veh: 53.7 ± 2.7%, n = 18 mice from 4 litters). This increase is reduced in MIA offspring treated with ibudilast during the first 2 postnatal weeks (MIA + Ibud: 37 ± 2.9%, n = 17 from 4 litters). There was also a mild effect of ibudilast on control offspring (control + Ibud: 27.6 ± 3.8%, n = 17 from 4 litters). (d) The spine density observed at 3 months is inversely correlated with the percent of marbles buried at P60 (Pearson r = −0.49, n = 18, P = 0.048). Data are represented as mean ± SEM.