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 2

Transcription factors and cytokines in T helper cells from active tuberculosis patients, clinically cured tuberculosis patients, and TST+ healthy donors. (a) Schematic representation of the gating strategy of CD4+ T cells and determination of percentage of transcription factors and cytokines ((b) T-Bet and IFN-γ; (c) GATA-3 and IL-4; (d) RORγT and IL-17) in CD4+ cells. From left to right, T cells were separated based on FSC and SSC patterns. These cells were isolated according to CD4 expression and the expression of transcription factors and cytokines was evaluated. Dot plots representative of a single participant are shown. (e)–(m) Comparison of cytokines and transcription factors 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. (e) %IFN-γ+; (f) %T-Bet+; (g) T-Bet+IFN-γ+; (h) %IL-4+; (i) %GATA-3+; (j) GATA-3+IL-4+; (k) %IL-17+; (l) %RORγT+; (m) RORγT+IL-17+. : Kruskal-Wallis test followed by Dunn’s post hoc test. Horizontal lines represent the median, bars represent 25th–75th percentiles, and vertical lines represent 10th–90th percentiles.

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