Fig. 4

Conditional GLUT1 overexpression in cerebral micro-vessel attenuated postoperative cognitive decline in aged mice. A Schema of the experimental design of the GLUT1 intervention. B Representative Western blot images of microvascular GLUT1 level in the hippocampus on POD 14. C Microvascular GLUT1 expression in the hippocampus, normalized to GAPDH; two-way ANOVA with Tukey’s multiple comparison test with n = 6–8 mice per group. D Representative confocal images showing GLUT1 staining on POD 14, scale bar: 50um. E Histogram showing the quantification of GLUT1⁺ relative intensity. F Representative confocal images showing tight junction marker claudin 5 staining on POD 14, scale bar: 50um. G Histogram shows quantification of claudin5⁺ relative intensity. H Representative confocal images showing tight junction marker ZO-1 staining on POD 14, scale bar: 50um. I Histogram shows quantification of ZO-1⁺ relative intensity. Two-way ANOVA with Tukey’s multiple comparison test with n = 4 mice per group. J, K Y-maze test on POD 14 including: the number of errors (G) and the latency (H), two-way ANOVA with Tukey’s multiple comparison test was applied to the analysis of latency, Kruskal–Wallis test with Dunn’s multiple comparison test was applied to the number of errors with n = 6–8 mice per group. L, M NOR test on POD 14, including: discrimination index of two similar objects (A1 and A2) on POD 13 training (L); discrimination index of novel object (B) on POD 14 NOR testing (M), two-way ANOVA with Tukey’s multiple comparison test with n = 6–7 mice per group. Data is presented as mean ± SEM, *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. POD, postoperative day; SEVO, sevoflurane; LAP, laparotomy; AAV9-ICAM2-CON,  AAV9 control viral vector with ICAM2 promoter and GFP sequence; AAV9-ICAM2-GLUT1, GLUT1 sequence was inserted into AAV9 control viral vector after ICAM2 promoter and followed by GFP sequence