Expression Pattern of Transcription Factors and Intracellular Cytokines Reveals That Clinically Cured Tuberculosis Is Accompanied by an Increase in Mycobacterium-Specific Th1, Th2, and Th17 Cells

Figure 3

T helper regulatory cells in active tuberculosis, clinically cured tuberculosis, and TST+ healthy donors. (a) Cells were previously separated based on FSC and SSC patterns (as showed in Figure 2(a)). (b) These cells were isolated according to CD4 expression and the expression of CD25 was evaluated (upper panel). Lower left panel represents FoxP3+ cells in CD4+CD25− cells and lower right panel represents FoxP3+ cells in CD4+CD25+ cells. Positive cells were defined using an appropriate isotype control. Dot plots representative of a single participant are shown. Comparison of (c) %CD4+CD25−, (d) %CD4+CD25+, (e) %CD4+CD25+FoxP3+, (f) %CD4+FoxP3+, and (g) %CD4+FoxP3+ among TST+ healthy donors (white box-plots), active-TB patients (dashed box-plots), and TB-treated patients (gray box-plots) in stimulated (4 μg/mL M. bovis antigen) and unstimulated (medium only) cultures. : Kruskal-Wallis test followed by Dunn’s post hoc test. Horizontal lines represent the median, bars represent 25–75th percentiles, and vertical lines represent 10–90th percentiles.

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