Fig. 4

Effects of paeoniflorin on mTOR/NF-κB signaling pathway in hippocampi of rats after cerebral ischemia. One week after four-vessel occlusion (4-VO) surgery, rats were intraperitoneally administered saline (4-VO), paeoniflorin (4-VO+PF; 40 mg/kg/day), paeoniflorin+AM630 (4-VO+PF+AM630; 40 + 3 mg/kg/day), AM630 (4-VO+AM630; 3 mg/kg/day) or HU308 (4-VO+HU308; 3 mg/kg/day) for consecutive 28 days. a Representative Western blotting photographs showing protein levels of p-mTOR, mTOR, p-IκBα, IκBα and β-actin in cytoplasmic fractions and NF-κB p65 and lamin B1 in nuclear fractions of hippocampus tissues of rats. The β-actin and lamin B1 protein levels served as internal controls, respectively, for cytoplasmic extracts and nuclear extracts. Levels of phosphorylated b mTOR and c IκBα in cytoplasmic extracts, and of d NF-κB p65 in nuclear extracts, were converted to arbitrary densitometric units, normalized by the value of the corresponding loading control and expressed relative to the phosphorylation ratio or to the protein level in sham-operated group (defined as 1-fold). Each bar represents mean ± SD of three independent experiments. n = 6 rats per group. ^#P < 0.05 versus sham group, *P < 0.05 versus 4-VO model group, ^§P < 0.05 versus 4-VO+PF group