Figure 4

Combined treatment delays the onset of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) phenotype. (A) Images of the mice that received different treatments on postnatal days (PNDs) 16 and 23. Note that mice that received combined treatment had longer tails. (B) Plot showing the tail lengths of wild-type mice (n = 10, black triangles) and mice with late-onset SMA that received vehicle (n = 25, green triangles), L-ascorbic acid (L-AA) (n = 30, blue circles) or combined (n = 36, red circles) treatment. The SMA groups are shown in a magnified figure to the right. Lengths were measured every other day from PND 7 to PND 39. A trend of delayed onset of tail necrosis was observed in the mice that received combined treatment. The combined treatment significantly delayed tail loss according to one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). (C) Ear integrity was scored on a scale of 0 to 4. (D) PND 90 mice that had received different treatments. Note that the mice that received combined treatment retained ear integrity longer. (E) The plot represents the mean score of ear integrity for wild-type mice (n = 10, black triangles) and mice with late-onset SMA mice that received vehicle (n = 10, green solid triangles), L-AA (n = 15, blue solid circles) or combined (n = 17, red open circles) treatment. *P < 0.05 compared with the L-AA-treated group; **P < 0.01 compared with the vehicle-treated group, one-way ANOVA.