Fig. 1

Aldara application, which causes a psoriasis-like skin inflammation, induces a remote transcriptional response in the brain. Mice were treated with 80 mg of Aldara cream or control cream every 24 h for five consecutive days. a Mouse weights were recorded after each treatment. Mice were euthanised 24 h after the final application, and b areas of treated skin were sectioned to 5 μm, stained with H&E and visualised at ×100 magnification using a light microscope. Epidermis [1], dermis [2], hair follicles [3], muscle [4], flaking of the stratum corneum [5] and epidermal hyperplasia [6] are shown. Scale bar = 100 μm. Microarray analysis was performed on perfused whole brains. c DAVID analysis was used to identify enriched biological pathways. d GeneSpring GX software was used to identify differentially expressed chemokine genes, which are presented on a heatmap and shown in order of fold-change induction in the brain. n = 5 mice per group. Significance was measured using two-way ANOVA with Bonferroni multiple comparison post-tests ***p ≤ 0.001