Fig. 6

Oral administration of valine or intraperitoneal injection of CoA protect recipient mice against virulent H7N9 virus infection. Survival rate (a) and weight loss (b) of mice orally administrated (p.o.) daily for 1 week with 100 mg of valine, isoleucine, or lysine, or the same volume of PBS (200 μL) and then infected with H7N9 influenza virus GX (n = 10 mice per group). **P < 0.01 (valine vs. PBS), ^##P < 0.01 (lysine vs. PBS). Virus titers (c), cytokine concentrations (d), and histological examination (H&E staining) (e) of the lungs of valine-pretreated mice after GX virus infection. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01 (valine vs. PBS). Survival rate (f) and weight loss (g) of mice intraperitoneally injected (i.p.) daily for 3 days with 0.2 mg of CoA or the same volume of PBS (100 μL) and then infected with H7N9 influenza virus GX (n = 10 mice per group). *P < 0.05 (CoA vs. PBS). Virus titers (h), cytokine concentrations (i), and histological examination (H&E staining) (j) of the lungs of CoA-pretreated mice after GX virus infection. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01 (CoA vs. PBS). At each time point, 5 mice per group for the detection of virus titers and cytokine concentrations, and 3 mice per group for the histological examination. Statistics in survival assay were done with the log-rank (Mantel-Cox). Statistics for weight changes and cytokine concentrations were two-way ANOVA. Statistics for virus titer was t test. The data are presented as the mean ± SD. For the histological examination, representative images are shown. All experiments were performed at least twice under similar conditions and yielded similar results