Fig. 3.

Cervicovaginal inflammation associates with neutrophil and epithelial barrier proteome changes. Mass spectrometry analysis of cervicovaginal fluid identified alterations to the mucosal proteome with inflammation groups. Proteins that were differentially abundant (adj. p<0.05) underwent unsupervised hierarchical clustering, and inflammation status based on levels of inflammatory cytokines was overlaid. Two clusters of proteins were identified. Proteins from each cluster underwent pathway analysis using ConsensusPathDB-human and significant pathways are shown on the right. One participant (high inflammation group) did not have a sample available for mass spectrometry analysis. Differential protein expression analysis was performed using the Kruskal-Wallis test with Benjamini-Hochberg correction for multiple comparisons. N=42