Figure 1.

Caspase-8 is activated in human and murine ALD. (a) In situ Caspase-8 activation (brown) determined via immunohistochemistry in representative liver sections from patients with ALD and healthy controls (ctrl). Cells with activation of Caspase-8 are highlighted by enlarged views. (b) Quantification of Caspase-8-positive cells in stained liver sections from individual patients. Ten randomly selected × 400 high power fields (HPF) per sample were analyzed and the number of Caspase-8-positive hepatocytes in each view field is indicated. (c–e) WT mice were fed isocaloric control diet (ctrl) or EtOH-containing Lieber-DeCarli diet for 8 weeks. (c) Left: Immunostaining for activated Caspase-8 (brown) in paraffin sections of WT liver. Right: Immunofluorescence staining for activated Caspase-8 expression (red) in frozen livers sections. (d) Quantification of Caspase-8-positive cells per × 400 HPF in paraffin sections. (e) Immunoblot analysis of Caspase-8 protein expression and activation. Activation is indicated by cleavage products of 43 and 18 kDa. GAPDH was used as loading control. ***P<0.001