Fig. 3

Macrophage infiltration at the ipsilateral sciatic nerve and associated DRG. At day-12, macrophage infiltration to the ipsilateral sciatic nerve is significantly reduced in the CXB-NE group (b and e), compared to the DF-NE group (a and e) (p < .0001). There is no significant difference between DF-NE and CXB-NE groups at day-18 (c, d and e). At both day-12 and day-18, the percentage of sciatic nerve infiltrating macrophages that are positive for nanomedicine ranges from 59 to 63% (e). A measure of macrophage infiltration per DRG cell body is calculated. These percentages are lower at the DRG: 19% in the day-12 DF-NE condition, 21% in the day-12 CXB-NE condition, 12% in the day-18 DF-NE condition and 13% in the day-18 CXB-NE condition (j). Seen here in this animation are nanoemulsion droplets inside macrophages [58]: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.8142962. In the DRG, there is no significant difference between the DF-NE and CXB-NE groups at both day-12 and day-18. Macrophage infiltration at the ipsilateral L4 and L5 DRG is significantly higher at day-18 in both the DF-NE (p < .0001) and CXB-NE (p < .0001) groups (h, i and j) compared to respective groups at day-12 (f and g). All scale bars are 15 μm. Data is represented as mean ± SEM (n = 3 animals, 19–42 ROI; ****p < .0001, one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s post hoc test)