Figure 4. Metformin attenuates tubular dilation, increases the antioxidant response, but does not affect the level of apoptosis.

(A) Representative H&E staining and quantitative analysis of the level of tubular dilation in the cortex. (B) Regulation of NQO1 at mRNA level in response to UUO normalized to 18S RNA. (C) Protein expression of HO-1 normalized to total protein level. (D) TUNEL assay with TUNEL-positive cells as green, and nuclei as blue. Right, a quantification of the number of TUNEL-positive cells/section. Each bar represents the mean ± SEM. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant indicated by *P < 0.01 by **P < 0.001 by ***, and not significant by ns.