Fig. 2

Human placental extract (HPE) induces apoptosis of peritoneal mast cells. Mice (BALB/c) were challenged intraperitoneally with 120 ng HPE or identical volume of PBS. Peritoneal lavage fluid was harvested after 4, 8 or 16 h and flow cytometry analysis the apoptosis of mast cell. A An example is given to show the gating strategy for cKit⁺/FcεRI⁺ peritoneal mast cells. The numbers adjacent to the boxed areas indicate percentage of cells in each. Mast cells apoptosis was defined as annexin V⁺ (left panel), and the percentages of apoptotic cells were plotted. B The apoptotic peritoneal mast cells and total numbers of peritoneal cells (right panel) from mice pre-treated with HPE for 4, 8 or 16 h. Data are shown as mean ± SEM (n = 5) of three separate experiments. **P < 0.01, using the unpaired Student t test for statistical significance