Fig. 5. Postoperative macrophage recruitment is higher in females and less robust in the age.

a, Representative images of Iba1⁺ cells within hind paw sections of young and aged non-incised paw and 2 days after plantar incision. b, Representation of the incised paw depicting the epidermis and dermis sites that were imaged for each section. c, Number of macrophages in naive paw show a male-specific age increase at the epidermis and an age-specific decrease in the adjacent dermis. d, Number of macrophages in the incised paw at the epidermis and adjacent dermis. Females have higher Iba1⁺ cell counts than male dermis postoperatively. Surgery significantly increased macrophages for young, but not aged, at the epidermis (e), and for all groups at the dermis site (f) and skin as a whole (g). (c-g) n=3 for all groups. Data are represented as mean ± SEM. Two-way ANOVA with post-hoc Bonferroni was used. *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0,001, ****p<0,0001. Scale bar = 50 μm.