Figure 7.

Immunosuppressive therapy results in decreased activation of the STAT3 signaling pathway in the infected cornea. WT mice were infected with 10³ PFU HSV-1/cornea or left UI as controls. (A) Starting at 2 hours PI, mice were topically treated with DEX or VEH (artificial tears) onto the corneas for 8 days PI prior to tissue collection and processing for Western blot analysis. (B) Representative blot images from cornea protein extracts showed infected, VEH- treated corneas had significant phosphorylation (activation) of STAT3 (pSTAT3) relative to UI controls, while infected, DEX-treated corneas had significantly reduced pSTAT3 levels. (C) Summary of the densitometry analysis of pSTAT3. STAT3 detection was used to measure total STAT3 and β-actin detection was used as a loading control. Internal normalization for each band was conducted relative to β-actin, and the results are expressed as ratio pSTAT3/STAT3 (n = 5–6 per group from two independent experiments), **P < 0.01 by ANOVA followed by Bonferroni multiple comparison test.