Standard laboratory rodent chow

Specific pathogen free, male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats, 5 weeks of age were purchased from CLEA JAPAN Co., Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan). These animals were maintained in our animal facilities at 25 ± 2 °C with 55 ± 10 % humidity under a 12-h light/dark cycle and were allowed free access to tap water and standard laboratory rodent chow (Oriental Yeast Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan) throughout the experiments. Each control and each experimental group consisted of five rats. All animal experiments were approved by the Ethics Committee for Animal Experiments of Showa University (Approved No. 05112).

Specific 5-week-old pathogen-free BALB/c male mice were purchased from CLEA Japan Co., Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan). The mice were maintained in our animal facility at 25 °C ± 2 °C with 55% ± 10% humidity under a 12-h dark/light cycle and were allowed free access to tap water and standard laboratory rodent chow (Oriental Yeast Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan) throughout the experiments. Each control and experimental group consisted of five mice. All animal experiments were approved by the Ethics Committee for Animal Experiments of Showa University (Approved No. 54011). Date of approval: 1 April 2018.