Systematic Scoring Analysis for Intestinal Inflammation in a Murine Dextran Sodium Sulfate-Induced Colitis Model

Murine colitis models are tools that are extensively employed in studies focused on understanding the pathobiology of inflammatory intestinal disorders. However, robust standards for objective and reproducible quantification of disease severity remain to be defined. Most colitis analysis methods rely on limited histological scoring of small segments of intestine, leading to partial or biased analyses. Here, we combine high-resolution image acquisition and longitudinal analysis of the entire colon to quantify intestinal injury and ulceration in the dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) induced model of murine colitis. This protocol allows for the generation of objective and reproducible results without extensive user training. Here, we provide comprehensive details on sample preparation and image analysis using examples of data from DSS induced colitis. This method can be easily adapted to other models of murine colitis that have significant inflammation associated with mucosal injury. We demonstrate that the fraction of inflamed/injured and eroded/ulcerated mucosa relative to the complete length of the colon closely parallels clinical findings such as weight loss amid DSS-induced disease progression. This histological protocol provides a reliable time and cost-effective aid to standardize analyses of disease activity in an unbiased way in DSS colitis experiments.