Fig. 1

Administration of short-term antibiotics reduces GFAP + astrocytes and plaque-associated astrocytes in the brain of male APPPS1-21 mice. (A) Experimental schematic. (B) Representative merged (a, d, g, j), GFAP (b, e, h, k) and Aβ (c, f, i, l) immunosignals from vehicle (VHL) treated male (a-c), antibiotic (ABX) treated male (d-f), VHL female (g-i), and ABX female (j-l) mice. (C) Quantification of GFAP + astrocytes/µm². (D) GFAP + astrocyte percent area. (E) Quantification of GFAP + astrocytes/µm². (F) GFAP + astrocyte percent area. (G) Plaque-associated astrocyte /µm². (H) Plaque-associated astrocytes percent area. (I) Plaque-associated astrocyte/µm² normalized to Aβ plaques/µm² in VHL male and ABX male APPPS1-21 mice. (J) Plaque-associated astrocytes/µm². (K) Plaque-associated astrocytes percent area. (L) Plaque-associated astrocytes/µm² normalized to Aβ plaques/µm² in VHL female and ABX female APPPS1-21 mice. Representative male VHL and ABX GFAP, IBA1, and β-actin immunoblots (M), quantifications (N, O), and GFAP vs IBA1 correlation (P). Representative female VHL and ABX GFAP, IBA1, and β-actin immunoblots (Q), quantifications (R, S), and GFAP vs IBA1 correlation (T). Immunoblot quantifications are from full blots depicted in Supplemental Fig. 5. M = male, F = female. Data expressed as mean ± standard deviation. N = 6–8/group Statistics calculated using two-tailed unpaired student’s t-tests. 4 sections used per animal. * denotes a p-value ≤ 0.05, ** indicates p-value ≤ 0.01, *** indicates p-value ≤ 0.001, and **** indicates a p-value of ≤ 0.0001. Scale bar indicates 100 µm