Figure 4

ILK regulates wasting disease and CCL2 expression in chronic colitis. A. Chronic DSS (2.5%) colitis was induced in 6 animals per group using 3 rounds of 2.5% DSS in the drinking water. Animal weights were monitored and the data in A show that there was a significant attenuation of the weight loss in the ILK-ko animals (squares), compared with the wild-type group (diamonds), (*p < 0.05). B. Assessment of microscopic damage in these mice indicated a significant reduction in the ILK-ko mice (*p < 0.05). Representative histology is shown in C, where an obvious loss of crypts, mucosal edema and inflammatory infiltrate are shown in the control sample. D. Total RNA was extracted from sections of distal colon and reverse transcribed to make cDNA. This was used to determine the message levels of CCL2 using semi-quantitative RT-PCR. As can be seen from this figure, CCL2 induction was significantly (*p < 0.05) reduced in the ILK-ko animals (the barchart E shows the message levels corrected for β-actin, and are for the entire sets of 6 mice per treatment group). F. Distal colonic lysates were obtained using homogenization buffer and then used to determine CCL2 levels by ELISA. The data are for 6 mice per group and show a reduction in levels of CCL2 in the ILK-ko mice (**p < 0.01).