Figure 2

PAS staining of lung sections. Paraffin lung sections were stained with PAS to determine goblet cell metaplasia in large and small airways. A to D, represents large airways and F to I represents small airways from mice exposed to RA, CS, HK-NTHi and CS/HK-NTHi respectively. Arrows in C, D and I represents cells positive for PAS, a marker of goblet cells. Number of PAS positive cells in large (E) and small (J) airway epithelia were counted in at least 10 random fields per slide and expressed as number of goblet cells/100 μM basement membrane length. Data represents median with range calculated from 5–6 mice (* different from RA-exposed mice, p ≤ 0.05, ANOVA on ranks; # different from CS-exposed mice, p ≤ 0.05, ANOVA on ranks; † different from HK-NTHi-exposed mice, p ≤ 0.05, ANOVA on ranks). Airway epithelial hyperplasia is observed in large airways of HK-NTHi (C) and both large (D) and small (H) airways of CS/HK-NTHi exposed mice. Images are representative of 5–6 mice per group.