Fig. 4

TSPO expression in microglia, astrocytes, neurons and endothelium in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus in the ME7−prion mice. A, D Confocal photomicrographs from dentate gyrus-immunostained sections from NBH, ME7, ME7 + JNJ527 mice. A Microglia/macrophages, Iba1 (cyan), astrocytes, GFAP (green), and TSPO (red). D Neurons, NeuN (green), endothelial cells, CD31 (purple) and TSPO (red). Scale bar = 20 μm for top panels A and D. Magnifications at 50 μm showing TSPO (red) in astrocytic cells (green) and in microglia/macrophages (cyan) (bottom panel A) and TSPO (red) in neuronal cells (green) and in the vascular endothelium (purple) (bottom panel D) with their confocal lateral views showing co-localization of TSPO in the different cell types. Nuclear counterstaining was performed with DAPI (blue). For panel A: white arrowsheads: cells positive for GFAP and TSPO; empty arrowheads: cells positive for Iba1 and TSPO and for panel D: white arrowsheads: cells positive for NeuN and TSPO; empty arrowheads: cells positive for CD31 and TSPO. B Cell counts expressed as TSPO+Iba1+, C cell counts expressed as TSPO+GFAP+ cells, E cell counts expressed as TSPO+NeuN+, F area expressed as TSPO+CD31+ area and G representation of TSPO+Iba1+, TSPO+GFAP+ and TSPO+NeuN+ cells from the dentate gyrus from the three treatment groups. Each single dot represents an individual mouse’s data from one selected section from each region of interest from an ROI in the dentate gyrus placed as shown in Additional file 1: Fig. S2B. Error bars represent mean ± standard error of the mean. Statistical differences: significant differences in the number of TSPO+Iba1+ cells (F (2, 19) = 16.34, p < 0.0001), TSPO+GFAP+ cells (F (2, 20) = 10.84, p = 0.0012) and TSPO+NeuN+ cells (F (2, 16) = 34.55, p < 0.0001) but not in the TSPO+CD31+ area (F (2, 15) = 2.099, p = 0.1571). Data were analysed with a one-way ANOVA followed by post hoc Tukey tests (n = 7–8/group)