Figure 4

Blast-induced vascular apoptosis at the margins of a shear-related injury. Panel A shows images of a hippocampal vessel from the brain of a rat that received 3 × 74.5 kPa blast exposures and was sacrificed 24 hours after the last exposure. The section was labeled for TUNEL (green) and immunostained for α-smooth muscle actin (red). Nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue) and sections were imaged by confocal microscopy. Three TUNEL-labeled cells are indicated by asterisks. Panel B shows a vessel from a control animal. No TUNEL-labeled cells are apparent in the control. Scale bar: 10 μm.