Figure 3.

Reduction in histological damage at 21 dpo by hXIAP overexpression in CB57^hXIAP mice. (A) Representative images of spinal cord sections from sham (black), 21 dpo injured CB57^WT mice (blue), and CB57^hXIAP+ 21 dpo injured mice (red). (B) Estimations of the percentage of preserved white matter in transverse sections comprising 3 mm surrounding the injury epicentre of the spinal cord show that CB57^hXIAP+ mice (red symbols) slices have a significant increase in spared tissue area in sections caudal to the injury epicentre compared with CB57^WT mice (blue symbols) (symbols represent mean ± SEM; ** = p-value < 0.01 in Student’s t-test vs. CB57^WT mice.; n = 4–6 animals/group). (C) Estimations of the volume of spared white matter in cylinders 300 µm-long centred at the injury epicentre, as well as caudal and rostral to this region, also reveal a protective effect of hXIAP overexpression (red bars) in the region caudal to the injury zone in comparison with WT mice (blue bars) (bars represent means ± SEM; † = p-value < 0.05, †† = p-value < 0.01, ††† = p-value < 0.001 vs. their correspondent sham samples for each mouse strand; ** = p-value < 0.01, in Student’s t-test, n = 4–6 animals/group). (D) Dot-plot correlating preserved white matter volumes with the corresponding neuron counts for each section (Figure 2) at the SCI epicentre and at both caudal and rostral directions of transgenic and WT mice altogether. Pearson correlation coefficient = 0.6, p-value = 0.012.