Fig. 2

Quantification of cortical demyelination, microglial activation, astrocyte activation, apoptotic cells, and neuronal loss. PLP loss is illustrated in a on the ipsilateral hemisphere and in b on the contralateral hemisphere. Both anti-CD20 therapy approaches result in less PLP loss, with a slightly higher impact of E2. Microglial activation is shown in c on the ipsilateral hemisphere and in d on the contralateral hemisphere. Both anti-CD20 therapy approaches show less microglial activation compared to the control groups. The microglial activity is comparable to the C0. Results of activated astrocytes are shown in e on the ipsilateral and in f on the contralateral side. There are more activated astrocytes detectable in control groups in comparison to the anti-CD20 therapy groups, which are comparable to the C0. Apoptotic cell counts are illustrated in g on the ipsilateral and in h on the contralateral side. On both sides, apoptotic cell counts are reduced compared to the control groups and showed comparable cell counts as determined for the C0s. Quantification of neurons is shown in i on the ipsilateral and in j on the contralateral hemisphere. Control groups showed higher neuronal loss in comparison to C0s and anti-CD20 therapy groups. In all of those quantifications, there is a significant difference between the C0 and the control groups, but there is no significant difference between C0 and anti-CD20 therapy groups, indicating an overall favorable role of this therapy approach. Black dots indicate outlier. The data of all significances between all tested groups is given in Table 2