Figure 1.

Liver steatosis. Oil red staining showed overexpression in the prenatal dexamethasone group (DEX) compared with that in the vehicle group. This was found to return to the control value in the prenatal dexamethasone and melatonin treatment group (DEX+MEL). (a) Oil red staining in the vehicle group. (b) The increased liver cell oil red staining in the DEX group. (c) The melatonin treatment decreased the number of oil red stained liver cells induced by dexamethasone at ~120 days (original magnification ×400, blue arrows: positive hepatocytes). (d) Semi-quantification of the oil red stained cells. All the results represent the standard error of means of six animals, * p < 0.05 when comparing with the DEX group. The letters represent different groups. DEX, prenatal dexamethasone; DEX+MEL, melatonin treatment after prenatal dexamethasone.