Figure 1.

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), etoposide (Eto) and dexamethasone (Dex) induce severe thymic atrophy in BALB/c mice. Six‐ to 8‐week‐old male BALB/c mice were either orally infected with ~10⁹ CFU of Salmonella Typhimurium or were intraperitoneally injected with LPS (4 mg/kg), Eto (100 mg/kg) or Dex (15 mg/kg). On day 5 post‐infection (ST) and day 4 post‐intraperitoneal treatment, the mice, along with the control untreated mice (UT), were killed. (a) The thymi were harvested and the viable cell numbers in the organs were quantified by Trypan blue exclusion assay using a haemocytometer. (b) The mice were monitored at 8‐hr intervals for survival after infection or intraperitoneal treatment. The dot plots are depicted as mean ± SEM of four to nine mice per group. The two‐tailed Mann–Whitney test was used for statistical analysis, **P ≤ 0·01, ***P ≤ 0·001 and ns: not significant. The statistical significances denoted on the experimental groups are in comparison with the UT group. The survival curves contained four mice per group.