Stereological analysis of the effects of oral tempol in spinal cords.

Stereological estimates for total number and mean volumes (µm3) of toluidine-blue stained neurons (TB neurons) and ChAT-positive neurons in lumbar spinal cord of G93A rats untreated and treated with oral tempol. Rats received tempol (30 mM) in their drinking water starting at 7 weeks of age and were sacrificed at the time of middle symptomatic phase of G93A rats (115–120 days) Values are group means (CVs).
For toluidine blue-stained neurons, the precision of estimated number (expressed as CE(NTB)) was 0.04 for the wild-type group, 0.06 for the treated G93A group and 0.02 for the untreated G93A group. For ChAT-positive neurons the precision of estimated number (expressed as CE(NChAT)) was 0.07 for the wild-type group, 0.06 for the treated G93A group and 0.02 for the untreated G93A group. Means that not share a letter are significantly different (*p = 0.002; **p = 0.003; ***p = 0.02; ****p = 0.002). Stereological methods were conducted in 15 rats, 5 animals per each group: wild-type, untreated G93A and treated G93A. Ten 40 µm-thick systematic, uniform and random sections were analyzed per animal, summing up 50 sections per group and 150 sections in the three studied groups.