Figure 4

In vivophagocytosis ofK. pneumoniaebacteria by alveolar macrophages isolated from SP-A (-/-) mice exposed to ozone or FA. Experimental design is described in Methods. Absolute data were used for this analysis. Data from filtered air and ozone-exposed WT mice (on the left broken lines) are from Mikerov et al. [39] and are presented here for comparison purposes. Reference (dotted lines) in the figure are shown for convenience to demonstrate the similarity of the phagocytic indices of ozone-exposed WT mice and filtered air-exposed SP-A (-/-) mice. Differences were considered significant if p < 0.05 with a t-test. *Significant differences between FA exposed and ozone exposed mice of the same sex; **significant differences between males and females after ozone exposure; ^§significant differences between SP-A (-/-) and WT mice of the same sex and after the same treatment (i.e. ozone-exposed or FA-exposed). The number of independent experiments for female and male SP-A (-/-) mice was 5 and 4, respectively. The number (n) of mice in each group that survived after the procedure is shown.