The Animal Study Protocol (IACUC; 536/2018) was approved by the Italian Ministry of Health and Ethics Committee for the use of experimental animals being conformed to guidelines for the safe use and care of experimental animals following the Italian D.L. no. 116 of 27 January 1992 and associated guidelines in the European Communities Council (86/609/ECC and 2010/63/UE). In this study, 5‐week‐old control (C57BL/10ScSnJ) and dystrophic (C57BL/10ScSn‐DMDmdx/J) mice weighing approximately 20–25 g were purchased from Charles River Laboratories (Milan IT). All mice were housed in an individually ventilated cage system with a 12‐h light–dark cycle and received standard mouse chow (Harlan Teklad) and water ab libitum. Animals belonging to each cage were randomly assigned to the different experimental groups. Each experimental group included at least five mice. The experimenter(s) performing the treatments and locomotor testing was blind to the genotype and treatment. Control or mdx mice were treated orally for 3 weeks with (i) vehicle (dimethyl sulfoxide – DMSO Cat# 276855 Sigma‐Aldrich), (ii) deflazacort (DFZ) 1.2 mg/kg/day (Cat# SML0123 Sigma‐Aldrich), (iii) sodium butyrate (NaB) 100 mg/kg/day (Cat# 303410, Sigma‐Aldrich); (iii) ACEA 2.5 mg/Kg (Cat# A9719 Sigma‐Aldrich), or (iv) rimonabant 0.5 mg/Kg (Cat# 9000484, Cayman) were intraperitoneally (IP) injected three times a week for 2 weeks (Iannotti et al, 2018 (link)).
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