Edaravone Guards Dopamine Neurons Figure 3. TH immunoreactivity in CPu and SNc. (A), (B) and (C), TH immunoreactivity in the CPu of Rot-group, Eda-group and Veh-group, respectively; (F), (G) and (H), TH-positive neurons in the SNc of Rot-group, Eda-group and Veh-group; (D) and (E), Quantitation of TH immunoreactivity in CPu and TH-positive cells in SNc (* P,0.05 compared to ROT-group; scale bars = 100 mm). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020677.g003 neurons of the edaravone rats was up-regulated by 69.94% compared to the Vehicle-treated rats (Fig. 6B–J). SNCA mRNA levels (Fig. 6A), SNCA protein expression (Fig. 6K–S) and TH- positive cell numbers (Fig. 6L,P,T) in the SNc displayed no difference between Eda-group and Veh-group, suggesting that NBP up-regulated the expression of the DA neurons-protective protein VMAT2 without inducing SNCA over-expression (which has been proven to be harmful to DA neurons). PLoS ONE | www.plosone.org 5 June 2011 | Volume 6 | Issue 6 | e20677