Figure 6

Effect of the combined treatment on the morphological structure of kidney tissues in aged septic rats. Rats were sham operated or subjected to CLP with injection of vehicle (normal saline) or GG-2 (80 nmol/kg of ghrelin and 50 µg/kg of GH) at 5 h after CLP. The kidney tissues were harvested at 20 h after CLP. Sections of kidney tissues were stained with H&E and examined under light microscopy. (A) Representative images of the stained kidney tissues are shown. The kidneys obtained from the vehicle group demonstrated a significant renal injury with glomerular destruction (black arrow), tubular proteinaceous casts (red arrow), loss of tubular brush borders and epithelial cell injury (blue arrows). The integrity of renal morphology in the GG-2 treatment group is significantly improved. Original magnification 200×. (B) Histologic injury scores of the kidney in different groups were quantified as described in Materials and Methods. Data are expressed as mean ± SE (n = 5–7 per group). *P < 0.05 versus sham and ^#P < 0.05 versus vehicle.