Figure 3

Quantification of dendritic cells in JNC and trigeminal ganglia. Zamboni fixed sections of JNC were stained with MHC II for DCs and PGP 9.5 for neurons. A: Overview of a JNC section stained for MHC II and PGP 9.5. B: An enlargement of DCs and neurons by using confocal microscope LSM 510 META (Carl Zeiss, Jena, Germany) with a 40x objective. Immunofluorescence analysis revealed amount of DCs, which are located next to the neuron in JNC of HDM treated mice (C) as well as control mice (D) and their number increased significantly during allergic airway inflammation. E: The quantification of DCs in JNC of control and HDM-treated mice. The results were expressed as percentages of MHC II positive cells in relation to PGP 9.5 positive neurons, H HDM 51.38 ± 2.38% (n = 9) vs. control 28.16 ± 2.86 (n = 10), p < 0.001. MHC II-IR cells have been found in trigeminal ganglia of control (F) and HDM treated mice (G). H: The quantification of MHC II-IR cells in trigeminal ganglia of control and HDM groups. The results were expressed as percentages of MHC II-IR cells in relation to PGP 9.5 positive neurons, HDM 52.69 ± 0.86% (n = 4) vs control 52.90 ± 1.36% (n = 4). Images A, C, D, F, G were acquired with Olympus BX51 (Tokyo, Japan), Scale bar in A: 500 μm, in B: 20 μm, in C, D, F, G: 100 μm.