Figure 3.

Colonic epithelial apoptotic and proliferative cell responses following NAP treatment of C. jejuni infected secondary abiotic IL10^−/− mice. On day (d) 0 and d1 secondary abiotic IL10^−/− mice were perorally infected with C. jejuni strain 81-176 by gavage and treated intraperitoneally with either synthetic NAP (open circles) or placebo (PLC; closed circles) from d2 until d5. On d6 post-infection, the average numbers of colonic epithelial (A) apoptotic (Casp3⁺) and (B) proliferating (Ki67⁺) cells were microscopically assessed in six high power fields (HPF, 400× magnification) per mouse in immunohistochemically stained colonic paraffin sections. Naive mice served as negative controls (open diamonds). Medians (black bars), levels of significance (p-values) as determined by the Kruskal–Wallis test and Dunn’s post-correction or the one-way ANOVA test and Tukey’s post-correction, as well as numbers of analyzed mice (in parentheses) are indicated. Data were pooled from four independent experiments.