Fig. 1.
(A) Peak diaphragm force generation in response to stimulation of 1 and 160 Hz in the group allowed to spontaneously breathe (SB; n = 10), the group pretreated with saline before undergoing controlled mechanical ventilation for 24 h (MV; n = 10), and the group pretreated with N-acetylcysteine before undergoing controlled mechanical ventilation for 24 h (MV-NAC; n = 10), where n refers to the number of animals. The values are means ± SD. *P < 0.05, compared with the SB group; #P < 0.05, compared with the MV group. Comparisons between the three experimental groups were performed using one-way ANOVA. (B) Minimum Feret diameters of diaphragm muscle fibers in the SB (n = 7), MV (n = 6), and MV-NAC (n = 6) groups. The data are presented using a box-and-whisker plot. *P < 0.05, compared with SB group. Comparisons between the three groups were performed using Kruskal–Wallis test followed by Dunn’s post hoc tests and Bonferroni correction for multiple comparison.