Fig. 4

Systemic inflammation markers and joint MMP-13 are lowest in MSC-EV treated animals. A Heatmap showing 26 analytes normalized on a 0–100 scale, animals/columns are grouped by PBS, MSC or MSC-EV treatment. B percentage positive MMP-13 staining in the cartilage and C percentage positive iNOS staining in the synovium. Representative images showing staining intensity per group for D MMP-13 and E iNOS. The chosen images depict values close to the group mean. One animal was excluded from multiplex analysis due to out of range values (PBS n = 11; MSC n = 12; EV n = 12). EGF is not shown due to many out of range values (see full data set at Additional file 1: Fig. S2). No animals or data points were excluded from iNOS and MMP-13 analyses, n = 12 per group. Graphs represent mean ± 95% confidence interval, p values in graphs are reported with asterisks where p ≤ 0.05 is *, p ≤ 0.01 is **, p ≤ 0.001 is *** and p > 0.05 is not significant