Fig. 2
Effects of maternal VAC and MIA on maternal inflammatory response, litter characteristics, and body weight. a Pregnant mice were treated with LPS at doses of 150, 125, 100, and 75 μg/kg LPS, and viable embryos were obtained at the dose of 75 μg/kg (F3,12 = 2.979, p < 0.05). n = 4 mice/group (one-way ANOVA and Bonferroni post hoc test). b A two-way ANOVA for corticosterone level revealed a significant effect of MIA (F1,19 = 76.971, p < 0.001) and VAC (F1,19 = 14.568, p = 0.001) and interaction of MIA × VAC (F1,19 = 14.369, p = 0.001). Subsequent analyses revealed that the levels of corticosterone were increased in the maternal serum at 2 h after LPS injection (p < 0.001) and that VAC pretreatment prevented this effect (p < 0.001). n = 5–7 mice/group. c A two-way ANOVA for IL-17a level showed a significant effect of MIA (F1,21 = 15.806, p = 0.001) and VAC (F1,21 = 60.667, p < 0.001) and a significant interaction of MIA × VAC (F1,21 = 15.806, p = 0.0004). A post hoc test showed that LPS increased the level of IL-17a in the maternal serum at E14.5 compared to controls (p < 0.001), and VAC pretreatment prevented this effect (p = 0.024), but there were no significant effects on IL-17a expression in the fetal cortex at E18.5 (p > 0.05) (d); n = 5–7 mice/group. e A two-way ANOVA for the number of embryos revealed a significant effect of MIA (F1,20 = 13.344, p = 0.002) and a significant interaction of MIA × VAC (F1,20 = 4.804, p = 0.04). A post hoc test showed that MIA significantly reduced the average number of embryos (p = 0.01) and VAC pretreatment rescued the fetal loss (p = 0.028). n = 6 mice /group. f Offspring were weighed at the indicated times. n = 6 mice/group (repeated-measures ANOVA). *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001; the results are all shown as the mean + s.e.m.