Fig. 7.

Curcumin blunts hepatocyte epithelial-mesenchymal transition to alleviate hepatic fibrosis through regulating autophagy signaling in vivo. ATG7^fl/fl, Alb-Cre; ATG7^fl/fl mice and PPARα^+/+, PPARα^−/−mice were used in this study. 50% olive oil CCl₄ reagent was intraperitoneally injected to establish an animal model of liver fibrosis in Model, ATG7^fl/fl, Alb-Cre; ATG7^fl/fl, PPARα^−/− group. The corresponding group was treated with curcumin (200 mg/kg). A and C: HE, Masson and Sirius red stained liver, and immunofluorescence analysis of liver α-SMA and LC3 (200 × ). B and D: Western blot analysis was used to detect the expression of PPAR-α, NOX1, Beclin-1, LC3, TTC3, SMURF2, Smads, α-SMA, Vimentin and ATG7 (x ± s, n ≥ 3). β-Actin was used as an invariant control for equal loading. Compared with the control group ^#P < 0.05, ^##P < 0.01,^###P < 0.001; Compared with the model group *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)