Fig. 5

PLX5622 corrects social behavioral deficits in VPA model mice. A Experimental timeline. C57BL/6 J female mice received VPA or saline injection on E12.5, and the prenatally saline-treated male offspring were assigned to the “Saline” group. The VPA-treated male offspring were randomly divided into two groups: one group provided with normal diet (“VPA” group); the other group reared with PLX5622 diet at P21 for 10 days and then with normal chow (“VPA + PLX5622” group). One cohort of mice were sacrificed respectively at P21, P31, P38, P45 and P52 for histological analysis, while a separate cohort of mice received a battery of behavioral tests at P70-P80. The “VPA + PLX5622” group of mice that underwent 0, 7, 14 and 21 days of microglia repopulation after withdraw of PLX5622 at P31 were hereinafter categorized as “VPA Rep.0”, “VPA Rep.7”, “VPA Rep.14” and “VPA Rep. 21” group, respectively. B-C, three-chamber social interaction test for the Saline, VPA and VPA + PLX5622 groups of mice. Sniffing time with Stranger 1 and Object in phase 1 (B); sniffing time with Stranger 1 and Stranger 2 in phase 2 (C). n = 8 per group; two-way ANOVA. ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05; ^#p < 0.1, “ns” denotes no statistical significance. Data are expressed as mean ± SEM