Fig. 1

17AAG reduced sevoflurane-induced apoptosis and oxidative stress in rat hippocampal neurons. Male, 20-month-old Sprague–Dawley rats were exposed to 2% sevoflurane (SEV) inhalation with or without receiving a prior 2-day intraperitoneal injection of 17AAG. The hippocampus tissue was removed after the inhalation and sectioned or homogenized. a The apoptosis of hippocampal neurons were evaluated on coronal sections with the TUNEL assay and hematoxylin stain (blue, nuclei; brown, TUNEL-stain; ×400 magnification; scale bar, 100 μm). b The apoptotic index was calculated by averaging the percentage of TUNEL-positive cells (number of TUNEL-positive cells × 100/total number of cells in the same microscopic field) in five random fields (×400 magnification). c The oxidative stress in hippocampal neurons was measured with the MDA assay using normalized tissue lysate. CON, control. n = 10. Mean ± SD, **P < 0.01 vs. CON, ## P < 0.01 vs. SEV by one-way ANOVA followed by Bonferroni multiple comparisons test. The images from Fig. 1a were taken from the same region of dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. The dentate gyrus contains densely packed granule cells