Fig. 2From: Cellular and molecular changes and immune response in the intestinal mucosa during Trichinella spiralis early infection in ratsKinetics of the appearance of innate effector cells in the small intestine during early T. spiralis infection. Goblet cells (a) were counted in the intestine epithelium using Alcian blue-PAS/Gill’s hematoxylin staining while eosinophils (b) and mast cells (c) were counted in the intestinal lamina propria using the Luna method and Alcian blue/saphranine stain, respectively. Cells were counted in non-infected and different dpi in tissue sections at 400× magnification per 15 villous crypt units (VCU) by two independent observers and results are expressed as mean of cell numbers/VCU ± SD from 5 rats/dpi. Data were analysed by adjusting to the negative binomial distribution followed by the Tukey’s multiple comparisons test (MASS and multcomp packages, respectively). Asterisks (*) indicate significant differences between infected and non-infected animals: *P < 0.05, **P < 0.001. Numerals (#) above bars indicate significant differences between days: #P < 0.05, ##P < 0.01; ###P < 0.001Back to article page