Fig. 3.

Epithelial (E)-cadherin conditional knockout (cKO) animals are sensitive to bleeding and death in response to immune-mediated thrombocytopenia. (A) Percent platelet depletion in wild-type (WT) and cKO mice after 6 to 10 hours of treatment with anti-CD42b (2 mg/g) (n ≥ 5). Data are presented as mean ± standard deviation (SD). (B) Absolute number of platelets remaining 6 to 10 hours after depletion with anti-CD42b (2 mg/g) between WT and cKO mice (n ≥ 5). Data are presented as mean ± SD. (C) Survival of animals following platelet depletion (n ≥ 5, p < 0.01). (D) Representative photomicrographs of haematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained sections of skin and urinary bladder (low and high magnification) in WT and cKO mice 7 hours post-antibody treatment. There is multi-focal marked dermal haemorrhage (*), massive haemorrhage within the adventitia (**) adjacent to the urinary bladder and marked and multi-focal haemorrhage (#) within the urinary bladder submucosa and detrusor muscle in cKO mice compared with WT mice. Higher power images of the boarder of the submucosa (SM) and detrusor muscle (DM) reveals there is fibrin (pale fibrillary material, arrow heads), haemorrhage and oedema (clear spaces) within submucosa of cKO mice compared with WT mice. (E) Survival of animals following platelet depletion with increasing doses of anti-CD42b in transplanted and untransplanted animals. cKO: untransplanted cKO mice (n = 3); WT: untransplanted WT mice (n = 3); WT-into-cKO: cKO mice transplanted with WT bone marrow (n = 5); cKO-into-cKO: cKO mice transplanted with cKO bone marrow (n = 6).