Figure 4. Allicin promotes keratinocytes apoptosis in vivo and vitro. (A) Apoptosis was measured by staining with annexin V/PI staining followed by flow cytometry. (B) Allicin significantly increased the percentage of early apoptotic cells (AV+/PI−) and late apoptotic cells (AV+/PI+) in a dose-dependent manner after 48h (n=3). (C) Western blot analysis of Bax, Bcl-2, and cleaved-caspase3/caspase3 by pretreating the HaCaT cells with different concentrations of allicin for 48 h. (D) Western blot analysis for Bax, Bcl-2, and cleaved-caspase3/caspase3 in IMQ-induced psoriatic lesions with allicin-treated. β-Actin was used as the endogenous loading control. (E) Representative images of skin sections stained with TUNEL (green) to detect apoptotic cells and nuclei were treated with DAPI (blue) in IMQ-induced psoriasis-like lesions treated with or without allicin. Scale bar = 50 μm. Data are expressed means ± SD. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, ****p < 0.0001.