Figure 3

Neuronal dendritic injury following gp120 exposure was prevented by Asc-p supplementation. Representative images of control (a), gp120 exposed (b) and gp120 exposed primary mixed human CNS aggregate cultures at 4 weeks in vitro after Asc-p supplementation (c) demonstrate that Asc-p supplementation protected neuronal MAP2 expression dendrites. The cultures were examined by immunohistochemistry for decreased MAP2 expression (brown) indicating the loss of synaptic complexity with a hematoxylin counterstain (blue) for nuclei. (Bar = 40 μm). Quantitative analysis of ten random fields taken from each of the three treatment groups from one culture (d) corroborated the qualitative trend. Control and gp120 treated group means were significantly different at p = 0.0002, the means of the gp120 and gp120+Asc-p groups were significantly different at p = 0.0012. However the control and gp120+Asc-p treated group means were not significantly different (p = 0.5052). Error bars: +/- 1 standard error.