Figure 1.

sEV-derived CC16 is reduced in BALF from pneumonia patients

(A–D) Two-hundred micrograms of BALF sEVs from pooled normal human (n = 10) and pneumonia patients (n = 21) are randomly pooled as five pairs per group. sEVs samples are examined by NTA to analyze size distribution (A), average size (B), and particle numbers (C). Data are mean ± SD. Ns, not significant, p > 0.05. (D) Representative TEM images of BALF-derived sEVs are shown. sEV samples were stained using immunogold labeling with the antibody against CC16. Scale bar, 100 nm. (E and F) Detection of CC16-positive BALF sEVs from healthy (n = 10) and pneumonia patients (n = 21) using flow cytometry (E). Mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) is measured (F). The boxes in the boxplots show the medians with 25^th and 75^th percentiles, and the whiskers show the minimum and maximum values. ∗∗p < 0.01 versus the normal group. (G and H) Pooled BALF sEVs from normal human (n = 10) and pneumonia patients (n = 21) were purified. Twenty micrograms of pooled sEVs from each group are used for measuring the amino acid number of CC16 by MS.