Figure 3.

Quantification of the inflammatory infiltrates by immunostaining of Lewis rat spinal cord (n = 12). Top panel: The spinal cords were isolated when the animals were showing maximum clinical symptoms (i.e. for the EAE group clinical score of 5 and EAE+NAC clinical score of 3). The sections were stained for ED1 (macrophage/monocyte -green) and nuclei labeled with DAPI (blue) as described in materials and methods. Spinal cords of rats induced for EAE demonstrated increased numbers of ED1 positive cells (green) and other glial and inflammatory cells (blue) in the CNS. Original magnification 200×. Bottom panel: Quantification of the infiltrates showed significant numbers of glial and inflammatory cells (A: DAPI; nuclei stained blue) of which many also were positive for macrophage/monocyte (B: ED1; stained green) in the spinal cord of EAE animals as compared to control and EAE + NAC treated animals.