Fig. 2

Intestinal injury: a representative photomicrographs of intestinal tissues stained with haematoxylin & eosin. a1 Intestinal I/R: Severe mucosal injury with epithelial desquamation and denuded villi (arrows). a2 Intestinal I/R + RIPC: RIPC before I/R injury results in minor mucosal injury represented by widened subepithelial spaces (arrows) and intact epithelial integrity at the villus tip. a3, a4 Sham and Sham + RIPC: Both sham operated groups show an intact epithelial layer and villus structure. Scale bars represent 100 µm. b Scoring of intestinal damage. 30 min of ischemia followed by 60 min of reperfusion leads to a significant increase in Chiu-score. RIPC ameliorates the intestinal I/R injury and Chiu-score. c Enzymatic activity of Caspase 3 and 7 is significantly increased within the intestinal tissue after I/R injury, while RIPC does not influence Caspase activity. Columns show the mean of 5–10 independent experiments. Bars denote SD. **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001. rfi relative fluorescent intensities