Fig. 5

Effect of AD and voluntary physical exercise on BDNF level in hippocampi and GFAP-positive astrocytes. a Representative WB of BDNF and β actin in hippocampal protein samples and the analysis of the WB bands normalized to β actin. b Colocalization of BDNF (green) and GFAP (red) in hippocampus of WT mice. Scale bars: 20 μm. c Representative images of BDNF (green), GFAP-positive astrocytes (red), and Merged (yellow) in the hippocampal area of WT-SED, WT-EXE, 5xFAD-SED, 5xFAD-EXE mice. Solid lines represent quantified hippocampi area. Scale bars: 200 μm. The framed areas are magnified from merged images, scale bar 50 μm. d Level of colocalization (yellow) between BDNF (green) and GFAP (red) was quantified by measuring total number of overlapped pixels (yellow) in both channels normalized by the total number of pixels. All data are presented as mean (± SEM). Two-way ANOVA used to measure genotype and exercise effect between WT and 5xFAD mice followed by unpaired t test comparison in case of significant interaction between two factors (genotype*exercise). a n = 5–7/group, d n = 8/group. «*» Genotype effect, «#» exercise effect: *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001, #p < 0.05