Development and use of a polarized equine upper respiratory tract mucosal explant system to study the early phase of pathogenesis of a European strain of equine arteritis virus

Table 1 Percentage of TUNEL-positive cells in the epithelium and underlying connective tissue.

	Percentage of TUNEL-positive cells at…h of cultivation
		0	24	48	72
Nasal mucosa	epithelium	0.2 ± 0.4	0.6 ± 0.6	0.4 ± 0.2	0.4 ± 0.8
	lamina propria	0.8 ± 0.7	1.3 ± 1.0	3.0 ± 0.7	4.9 ± 2.7
Nasopharyngeal mucosa	epithelium	0.4 ± 0.3	0.8 ± 1.0	0.7 ± 1.3	0.7 ± 0.5
	lamina propria	0.5 ± 0.8	1.7 ± 1.8	3.0 ± 0.4	5.5 ± 1.9

Percentage of TUNEL-positive cells was used as a parameter to determine the effect of in vitro culture on the viability of equine nasal and nasopharyngeal agarose embedded mucosal explants. No significant differences in the occurrence of apoptosis were found at any time point. Data are represented as means ± S.D. of triplicate independent experiments.

ISSN: 1297-9716