Fig. 5. FTY-720 treatment rescues the lethality of pericyte-deficient mice after induction of EAE. (A) Kaplan–Meier survival curves of vehicle and FTY720–treated Pdgfbret/ret mice after active induction of EAE (P = 0.002, log-rank test). The experiment was terminated on day 25 (marked by a black dashed line; n = 5 mice treated with vehicle, n = 6 mice treated with FTY-720). (B) Scoring of clinical symptoms during the course of FTY-720 treatment after induction of active EAE of control and Pdgfbret/ret mice. The left y axis shows the cerebellar ataxia scores of Pdgfbret/ret mice (in red) and the right y axis the classical EAE scores of control mice (in black). FTY-720 administration (0.5 mg/kg) was started on day 4 postimmunization (black arrow), and the experiment was terminated on day 25 postimmunization. The ataxia score or EAE score of each mouse is plotted individually. Arrowheads indicate when Pdgfbret/ret mice reached termination criteria and were euthanized (n = 4–5 mice per group). (C and D) Quantification of the absolute cell numbers of the different immune cell populations (gating shown in SI Appendix, Fig. S11 F and G) in the brain (C) and spinal cords (D) of vehicle- and FTY-720–treated control and Pdgfbret/ret mice using flow cytometry. Controls, n = 3 vehicle-treated and n = 4 FTY-720–treated; Pdgfbret/ret mice, n = 3 vehicle-treated and n = 3 FTY-720–treated. Pooled data from two independent experiments. Data are presented as the mean ± SD. Two-way ANOVA followed by Šídák’s post hoc test was used to determine statistical significance between groups.
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