Fig. 3

EA preconditioning reduced AQP4 expressing astrocytes after focal cerebral ischemia. a The blue rectangle illustrates the imaging field. b GFAP (green), AQP4 (red) and DAPI (blue) staining in the peri-infarct area of vehicle or EA-pretreated mouse brains 24 h after focal cerebral ischemia. Quantification was done in three adjacent brain sections and three fields per predefined area of each brain section were counted for GFAP and AQP4 staining. The co-expression of AQP4 and GFAP within the same cell is indicated by yellow (merge). c, d Quantification of GFAP(+) cells (c) or GFAP(+)/AQP4(+) cells (d) in the ischemic cortex. Data are expressed as the means ± SEM (N = 4). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01 when compared with the vehicle group (Veh). The scale bar is 50 μm