Table of Contents
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. II
Abstract ................................................................................................................................... III 
List of tables ........................................................................................................................... VI
List of figures ........................................................................................................................ VII 
List of abbreviations ............................................................................................................ VIII 
1.Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 
1.1. Muscle damage ................................................................................................... 2 
1.2. Role of Macrophages ......................................................................................... 4 
1.3. Macrophage Ablation ......................................................................................... 6 
1.4. Macrophage depletion in mouse models ............................................................ 7 
1.5. Mouse injury models ........................................................................................... 9 
1.6. Rationale ............................................................................................................. 9 
1.6.1Hypothesis ..................................................................................... 9 
1.6.2Objectives...................................................................................... 9 
2.Materials and Methods ............................................................................................ 11 
 2.1 Animal maintenance and treatments ............................................................... 12 
 2.1.1 Ethical Approval .......................................................................... 12 
2.1.2 Treatment of mice with doxycycline ............................................ 12 
2.1.3 Muscle injury and tissue harvest .................................................. 12 
 2.2 Processing tissue samples ............................................................................... 13 
 2.4. Histochemical and immunochemistry antibody stains ................................... 14 
 2.4.1 Haematoxylin and eosin staining ................................................. 14 
2.4.2 F480 stain ..................................................................................... 14 
2.4.3 CD68 antibody stain ..................................................................... 16 
2.4.4 IgG stain ....................................................................................... 17 
2.4.5 Laminin stain ................................................................................ 17 
 2.5 Statistical analysis ........................................................................................... 17 
 2.5.1 Morphometric analysis ................................................................. 18 
 2.5.2 Quantification of macrophages .................................................... 18 
 2.5.3 Calculation of fibre size diameter and central nucleation ............ 18 
 2.5.4 Percentage of tissue damage ........................................................ 18 
3. Results ........................................................................................................................ 21