Dex phosphate

The male mice were divided into different groups and were dosed once daily with subcutaneous injection with dexamethasone (Dex) phosphate (1 mg/kg; Sigma, St. Louis, MO, United States) for 4 weeks as described (Shi et al., 2015 (link)); meanwhile, subcutaneous injection with saline as control. For NAC injection, mice received 400 mg/kg of NAC (N-acetylcysteine) in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS). Administration of NAC was performed as a slow intravenous bolus (60 s) through a tail vein catheter. Throughout the dosing period, the mice were weighed to examine the effect of dosing on body weight. The animals were then sacrificed with an intraperitoneally injected overdose of sodium pentobarbitone (100 mg/kg). The femur was removed by dissection for micro-computerized tomography (microCT) analysis. Mouse BM-MSCs were harvested for further experiments. The treatment protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee and the Animal Research Committee, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine (Permit Number: AIRB-2021-143).

Mice were randomly divided into four groups (n=10 in each group): the control group, the OVA group, OVA mice that were treated with Huai Qi Huang (OVA + Huai Qi Huang group), and OVA mice that were treated with dexamethasone (Dex) (OVA + Dex). Dex is widely used to treat asthma and served as a positive control in the present study. Mice in the last three groups were intraperitoneally (i.p.) injected with 100 μg OVA (Sigma, St. Louis, MO, U.S.A.) emulsified in 1 mg aluminum hydroxide (Pierce Chemical Co., Rockford, IL, U.S.A.) with a total volume of 0.2 ml on days 0–14. One day later, mice were challenged for 30 min via the airway with OVA (5% OVA) by ultrasonic nebulizer each day on days 15–22 consecutively. In the OVA + Huai Qi Huang group, OVA-treated mice were administered with Huai Qi Huang (0.4 g/100 g body weight; Qidong Gaitianli Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, Zhunzi, B20020074) daily by intragastric gavage. In the OVA + Dex group, OVA-treated mice were administered Dex phosphate (Sigma, 10% solution in PBS) by intragastric gavage for 1 h before OVA aerosol on days 15–22. Mice in the control group received the same schedule for sensitization and were administered with an equivalent amount of 0.9% sterile saline instead of OVA.