Fig. 4
Effect of lentivirus-mediated heterologous expression of hSPAG11B/C and APC366 in mBSA/IL-β-induced arthritis. a and b. Time course of oedema formation (increase in knee joint medio-lateral diameter) after induction of arthritis with mBSA/IL-1β in animals treated with the synthetic tryptase inhibitor APC366 at 10–100 μM (N = 6–8 mice per group), or previously transduced with pWPXLd-IG or phSPAG11B/C (N = 13–14 mice per group). *** P < 0.001, arthritis + vehicle groups vs. control; @@ P < 0.01; @@@ P < 0.001, arthritis + APC366 (10 μM) or arthritis + pWPXLd-IG groups vs. control; &&& P < 0.001, arthritis + APC366 (100 μM) or arthritis + phSPAG11B/C groups vs. control; # P < 0.05; ### P < 0.001, arthritis + APC366 (100 μM) or arthritis + phSPAG11B/C groups vs. arthritis + vehicle. c-f. Representative light photomicrographs of knee joint slices stained by the method of eosin and haematoxylin from a control animal (c), or animals submitted to mBSA/IL-1β-induced arthritis, previously injected with vehicle (d), or transduced with 2 × 106 TU/joint of pWPXLD-IG (e) or phSPAG11B/C (f). The arrows indicate areas of intense synovitis. The arrowheads show areas with moderate synovitis. g. Total and individual histopathological scores of inflammatory parameters (N = 4–6 mice per group). * P < 0.05; ** P < 0.01; *** P < 0.001, vs. control group. Abbreviations: JC joint cavity, SM synovial membrane, Ctrl control, n.s. not significant