Figure 7.

Apoptotic epithelial cell as well as immune cell responses in the lung and heart following peroral MDR P. aeruginosa challenge of mice with a human gut microbiota suffering from subacute ileitis. At day 5 following subacute ileitis induction, mice with a human gut microbiota were either perorally challenged with MDR P. aeruginosa (+Psae, dissolved in PBS) or with PBS alone (Mock). Uninfected mice with a human gut microbiota but without ileitis served as control animals (Naive). 96 h following Psae challenge, the average numbers of apoptotic (Casp3+; A,D) epithelial cells as well as of T lymphocytes (CD3+; B,E) and regulatory T cells (FOXP3+; C,F) in at least six high power fields (HPF) were quantitatively assessed in pulmonal (A–C) and cardiac (D–F) paraffin sections applying in situ immunhistochemistry. Box plots represent the 75th and 25th percentiles of the median (black bar inside the boxes). The total range and significance levels determined by one-way ANOVA test followed by Tukey post-correction test for multiple comparisons are shown. The total numbers of analyzed animals are given in parentheses. Data were pooled from four independent experiments.