Figure 2.

MSC treatment ameliorates lipid content in livers of high-fat-diet-fed mice; (A) lipid droplets were detected histochemically by staining with Sudan III in liver slices from the resectates before PBS (−MSC) or MSC (+MSC) application (cf. Materials and Methods) and 1 week post-surgery; pictures are representative for 5 and 6 different animals in the MSC group and in the group without MSC treatment, respectively; the percentage amount of lipid is shown in the insets (orig. magnification: 20×); (B) quantitative image analysis of pictures shown representatively in (A); values are means ± SEM and were calculated as the difference between lipid content at the time of surgery (resectate) and 1 week after application of either PBS (−MSC) or MSC (+MSC). This calculation was introduced to account for the different starting points in different animals featuring various degrees of NASH; (C) liver triglycerides were determined biochemically using the Triglyceride Assay Kit (Abcam); values are means ± SD from 3 (ND − MSC), 4 (ND +MSC), 9 (HFD − MSC) and 9 (HFD + MSC) animals per group; in (B,C), the two-sided Student´s t-test was applied for calculation of significance.