Research Article

A Subgroup of Latently Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infected Individuals Is Characterized by Consistently Elevated IgA Responses to Several Mycobacterial Antigens

Figure 2

Box-and-whisker plots including individual points for the comparison of 109 TB or non-TB specimens showing the optical density (OD) values of the following selected antigens: anti-NarL IgA (a), anti-19 kDa IgA (b), anti-PstS3 IgA (c), anti-MPT83 IgA (d), anti-AlaDH IgG (e), and anti-AlaDH IgA (f). Values are shown for sera from 14 healthy controls (HC), 42 TB patients, and 3 different LTBI groups. The mean ranks of IgA signals against the 5 antigens investigated were used to group the LTBI group into the top 3 group [LTBI (high IgA); comprising the progressor to active TB disease], the following 16 mean ranks [LTBI (medium IgA)] and the remaining LTBI group [LTBI (low IgA)]. The symbol depicted above either the TB patients or the LTBI (high and medium IgA) group shows a significant difference of this group compared to healthy controls. A value of ≤ 0.05 was judged significant and levels of significance were indicated as follows: –0.05, –0.01, .
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