Study on Comparison of Methods for Detection of Cell Apoptosis by Flow Cytometry

To evaluate the method of measuring apoptosis by flow cytometry with three stains, the apoptosis percentage of rat cortical neurons was measured by flow cytometry using propidium iodide(PI) staining, Annexin V/PI and JC-1 double staining respectively. The results showed that: the apoptotic positive percentage measured by PI staining,Annexin V/PI and JC-1 was 2.60%,6.52% and 18.56%, respectively. Our conclusion is that there were significant differences among the results of three staining methods: JC-1 staining was the most sensitive method, whereas PI single staining was not suitable to measure the early apoptosis of cells.