Fig. 6

Downregulation of trophic factors in ALS-CSF-exposed microglial cultures. Analysis of mRNA expression showed a downregulation of both GDNF (a ***p < 0.001, NC and NALS vs. ALS; n = 3 in triplicates) and VEGF (b ***p < 0.001, NC and NALS vs. ALS; n = 3 in triplicates) upon exposure to ALS-CSF. A quantitative analysis of the MFI of immunolabeled proteins further corroborated the findings of overall downregulation of GDNF (c–c”, graph e, *p < 0.05, NC; ^## p < 0.01, NALS vs. ALS; n = 5 in duplicates) and VEGF (d–d”, graph f, **p < 0.01, NC; ^# p < 0.05, NALS vs. ALS; n = 5 in duplicates) expression in response to ALS-CSF. Statistical significance was calculated using one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s post hoc test