Fig. 5

Autophagy induction inhibited the activation of microglia and the NLRP3 inflammasome. a Representative western blot of NLRP3, IL-1β, and IL-18 expression in the TNC after NTG, RAPA administration. β-actin was used as the control and band density normalization. b–d The optical density analysis of NLRP3 (b), IL-18 (c), IL-1β (d). The data showed that RAPA significantly reduced the expression of NLRP3 (b), IL-18 (c), IL-1β (d). n = 6 per group; data are presented as mean ± SEM; one-way ANOVA and Tukey’s multiple comparison test; **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 compared with the SHAM-VEH group; ^#p < 0.05, ^##p < 0.01, and ^###p < 0.001 compared with the NTG-VEH group. e Immunostaining of Iba1 in the TNC of different groups at × 200 magnification. Scale bar: 20 μm. f Magnified images (× 400 magnification) of Iba1 in the areas of the white dotted line frame in e. g–j Quantitative analysis of the Iba1-positive cells (g), Iba1 immunoreactivity (h), total (i), and mean (j) length of processes per microglia. n = 4 per group; 6 sections from each mouse and 4–6 FOV from each section were analyzed; values are expressed as mean ± SEM; one-way ANOVA and Tukey’s multiple comparison test; ***p < 0.001 compared with the SHAM-VEH group; ^##p < 0.01 and ^###p < 0.001 compared with the NTG-VEH group