Fig. 2.  Exposure to equipotent doses of desflurane, isoflurane, or sevoflurane similarly trigger neocortical neuronal apoptotic cell death in neonatal mice. Box plots represent quantification of neocortical neurons in layers II/III double stained with apoptotic marker activated caspase 3 and neuronal marker neuronal nuclei. Horizontal lines represent respective group medians; boxes, 25th–75th percentile; whiskers, 10^th–90^thpercentile; and closed circles, outliers. The 7–8-day-old mouse pups were treated for 6 h with room air (control, n = 9), 7.4% desflurane (n = 15), 1.5% isoflurane (n = 13), or 2.9% sevoflurane (n = 10). *P < 0.005 compared with control. There were no differences among the anesthesia groups (P > 0.8), by the Kruskal–Wallis test with the Dunn test for post hoc  comparisons.