Fig. 3

Deficiency of SOD₂ affects the pulmonary vascular remodeling. a. HE staining of pulmonary arterioles in WT and SOD₂^−/+ mice. b. Masson staining of collagen in WT and SOD₂^−/+ mice under CIH condition. c. Co-Immunofluorescence staining of the molecular of α-SMA and VWF. α-SMA was stained as red and VWF was green. Cellular nucleus was stained by DAPI (blue). d. The same lung lobe from WT and SOD₂^−/+ mice were analyzed of pulmonary vessel muscularization. Percentage of area of α-SMA⁺/(α-SMA⁺+VWF⁺) indicated the muscularization degree. Zero-20% represented for no muscularization (N), 20–40% for partly muscularization (P), and 40–100% for fully muscularization (M). e. Heart weight to tibia length ration showed the degree of myocardial hypertrophy in WT and SOD₂^−/+ mice. CON: Wild type mice in the normal air condition. CIH: Chronic intermittent hypoxia. WT: wild type mice. SOD₂^−/+: knock-down of SOD₂ gene heterozygous mice. N = 5. Comparisons between multiple groups were performed using ANOVA with the Bonferroni test. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001