Figure 1.

Measures of hepatic inflammation and fibrosis in mice fed an $\text{HFD}\pm \text{Aroclor\hspace{0.17em}}1260$ $\text{exposure}\pm \text{EGF}$ treatment: Male WT C57Bl/6 mice were fed an HFD (12 wk) and exposed to either vehicle or Aroclor 1260 ($20\mathrm{mg}/\mathrm{kg}$) by a one-time oral gavage at week 1. Aroclor 1260-exposed or vehicle mice were treated (via IP injection) with saline or EGF ($0.2\mathrm{\mu }\mathrm{g}/\mathrm{g}$) daily for 10 d starting at week 10. Mice were fasted for 12 h and euthanized, and tissues were harvested for downstream analyses. (A) Representative image of CAE stained liver section ($n=17$ per group, 1 liver section per mouse evaluated) (20× magnification objective) (arrows denote necrotic foci). (Bi) Representative image of picrosirius red stained (10× magnification objective) liver sections and (Bii) quantification. One liver section per mouse was evaluated ($n=17$ per experimental group). (C) Plasma measures by Luminex® of $\text{TNF}\mathrm{\alpha }$, PAI-1, and resistin. (D) Hepatic qPCR analysis of inflammatory gene marker expression ($Tnf\mathrm{\alpha }$, Il-6, Ly6g6d, Cd68, Tlr4). (E) Hepatic qPCR analysis of profibrotic genes $Tgf\mathrm{\beta }$ and Mef2c, and an $n=17$ was used for Figures 1B–F. A two-way ANOVA was used to statistically compare data sets followed by a Sidak correction for intergroup comparisons. A $p<0.05$ was considered significant. Significance due to EGF is denoted by (a), due to Aroclor 1260 denoted by (b), and due to interaction denoted by (c) for the two-way ANOVA. A $p<0.05$ was denoted by * for the Sidak multiple comparison test. Data are presented as box and whisker plots for Figure 1 that illustrate the median (midline), upper and lower quartiles (box), and the upper and lower limits (whiskers). All numerical data are presented in Table S6 “Numerical Data” as $\text{mean}\pm \text{SD}$, and p-values can be found in Table S5 “$p$-Values.” Numeric outliers were identified by ROUT method and removed. The number of outliers are reported in Table S4 “Outliers.” Note: AE, $\text{Aroclor\hspace{0.17em}}1260+\text{EGF}$; ANOVA, analysis of variance; AS, $\text{Aroclor\hspace{0.17em}}1260+\text{saline}$; CAE, chloroacetate esterase; Cd68, cluster of differentiation 68; CE, $\text{control}+\text{EGF}$; CS, $\text{control}+\text{saline}$; EGF, epidermal growth factor; HFD, high-fat diet; Il-6, interleukin-6; IP, intraperitoneal; Ly6g6d, lymphocyte antigen 6 family member G6D; Mef2c, myocyte enhancer factor 2C; qPCR, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction; Tgfb, Transforming growth factor-beta; Tlr4, toll-like receptor 4; $\text{TNF}\mathrm{\alpha }$, tumor necrosis factor-alpha.