Research Paper Volume 10, Issue 12 pp 3851—3865

Figure 8. Inflammation and apoptosis in the muscle layer from aged colon. Both aged mice (A) and old people (B) exhibited elevated mRNA expression levels of classic pro-inflammatory cytokines including TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 compared with those from young. GAPDH was used as internal control. Reduced expression of Bcl-2 (C) and a rise in expression of cleaved caspase-3 (D) were revealed by western blot analysis. The densitometric analysis of protein expressions normalized to β-actin. Statistical analysis was performed using Student’s t-test and data were represented as mean ± SD, statistical significance is: * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01, *** P < 0.001 compared with young group; n=5 mice or 4 human samples per group.