Treatment of animals with Rac1 peptide at all doses failed to influence clinical scores of disease severity or animal weight (data not shown), but animals treated with 2 mg of Rac1 peptide showed a highly significant decrease in paw swelling when compared with treatment with Ctrl peptide (61% reduction, P = 0.009) (Figure 2a, b ).
However, we observed a clear trend toward reduced paw swelling in mice treated with Rac1 peptide (Figure 4a, b ) in two independent experiments, although the differences did not reach statistical significance (experiment 1: 49% reduction, P = 0.528; experiment 2: 22% reduction, P = 0.193) (Figure 4b ).
The effect was dose-dependent; treatment with lower doses of Rac1 peptide showed a trend toward improvement, and this trend did not reach statistical significance (Figure 2a, b ).