Fig. 8.

Visualization of astrocyte coverage of the brain vasculature in control and blast-exposed rats. Sections from five individual control and five blast-exposed animals were immunostained for collagen IV (green) and GFAP (red) utilizing an antigen retrieval protocol employing pepsin treatment [30, 34]. Rats were euthanized 6 weeks after blast exposure. a-e Representative images from the prelimbic cortex from each individual control brain. f-j Representative images from the prelimbic cortex from each individual blast exposed brain. Arrows in panels (b, d, f) and (i) indicate examples of perivascular astroglial fibers associated with domains on blood vessels that stained poorly with antibodies against collagen IV even after pepsin treatment. Scale bar, 40 μm