Impaired Cytokine Responses to Epstein-Barr Virus Antigens in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Patients

Figure 2

Inflammatory cytokines, TNFα (a), TNFβ (b), IL1β (c), and GM-CSF (d), with similar induction in SLE patients and in HCs upon EBNA1 stimulation. TNFα (a), TNFβ (b), IL1β (c), and GM-CSF (d) quantified in dried blood spot samples from SLE patients (with normal lymphocyte levels, ) and sex- and age-matched HCs () by multiplexed Luminex assay with addition of HBR+. Left: cytokine concentrations (pg/mL) in SLE patients and HCs upon EBNA1 stimulation. Data are presented as median with interquartile range. values for comparison of SLE patients and HCs are 0.083, 0.103, 0.310, and 0.050 in (a), (b), (c), and (d), respectively. Right: induction of cytokines (pg/mL) from basic levels (PBS stimulation) by EBNA1 stimulation in SLE patients and HCs.