Fig. 4

TUNEL assay and caspase-3 levels detecting apoptotic activity. Representative images of cardiomyocyte apoptosis detected by TUNEL. The colour blue denotes all nuclei, the colour red denotes DNA damage, while the colour purple on the merged images denotes nuclei of TUNEL positive cardiomyocytes. a Significantly more TUNEL positive nuclei were present in the D-CON animals than in any other group. a, b Caspase-3 levels were increased in all DOX-treated groups compared to CON, however, in the BB and ACEI groups, the level of caspase-3 was significantly lower than in D-CON or AA groups. c n = number of animals per group (12 images per animal for TUNEL, 2–4 measurements per animal for caspase-3); Statistics: Wilcoxon’s rank-sum test; numbers are p values. AU = optical density in arbitrary units