Figure 5.

Tissue distribution of BMEs in macrophage-depleted mice. Adult male and female C57BL/6J mice were treated with clodronate-loaded liposomes in PBS to achieve macrophage depletion; controls were treated with PBS. Forty-eight hours after clodronate treatment, HiLyte-labeled BMEs or unlabeled BMEs (4 × 10¹¹ BMEs/g) were administered by oral gavage. Mice were euthanized 12 h after oral gavage and the distribution of HiLyte-labeled BMEs was analyzed in excised tissues. A: representative images of liver, lungs, and spleen of female and male mice are shown (3 mice per sex). Rows for each tissue represent the following treatments: row 1 = mice not treated with clodronate (PBS controls) and receiving HiLyte-labeled BMEs (PBS-HiLyte); and row 2 = mice treated with clodronate-liposome and receiving HiLyte-labeled BMEs (CLD-HiLyte); row 3 = mice not treated with clodronate (PBS controls) and receiving unlabeled BMEs (PBS-unl). B: densitometry analysis of background-corrected fluorescence units (F.U.) in liver, lungs, and spleen of male and female mice (combined). Values are means ± SD. Data were analyzed by Mann–Whitney U test. **P < 0.01. BME, bovine milk exosome; ns, nonsignificant.