Figure 7

Treatment with Cimetidine reduces secondary damage induced by spinal cord contusion injury in mice. A: Confocal images of the spinal cord at 28-day survival after injury stained with anti-GFAP are shown. Note that the size and extent of the lesion is smaller in the Cimetidine treated group compared to the vehicle-treated control (quantified in C). B: Luxol fast blue (LFB) stained sections of the spinal cord 28 days after SCI. Note greater sparing of myelin LFB staining in the Cimetidine-treated group (quantified in D). C: Quantification of tissue loss is shown. Note although the mean values in the Cimetidine treated group are smaller than in the vehicle-treated group, the value reaches statistical significance only at - 500 µm rostral to the lesion due to the variability between animals (Two-way RM-ANOVA; group effect F_(1,8) = 3.188, p = 0.1120; with Sidak's multiple comparison test; p*_(-500) = 0.0372, n = 5 mice per group. Note also that the longitudinal extent of the lesion is smaller in the Cimetidine-treated group. D: Mice treated with Cimetidine show a significant reduction of myelin loss (LFB staining) from the center of the lesion to 600 μm rostrally (Two-way RM-ANOVA; group effect F_(1,7) = 12.35, p = 0.0098; with post-hoc Bonferroni multiple comparison test; p*_(-600µm) = 0.0438, p*_(-400µm) = 0.0204, p**_(-200µm) = 0.0084, p*_(center) = 0.0103, n = 4-5 mice per group). Scale bars = 200 µm.