Fig. 2.

Frequency and phenotype of NK-cells from patients with HCC or HCV-related liver cirrhosis (LC) and healthy donors (HD). a Frequency of total, CD56^DIM and CD56^BRIGHT NK-cells in HCC (n. 15), LC (n. 8) and HD (n. 14). b Upper panels: percentage of CD11b⁺CD27⁻ cells in NK subsets from HCC, LC and HD. Lower panels: expression of the transcription factor Eomesodermin (EOMES) in CD11b⁺CD27⁻ NK-cell subsets from HCC, LC and HD. c, d Median Fluorescence Intensity (MFI) of NKG2D (C) and NKG2A (D) expression in NK-cell subsets from HCC, LC and HD. e Co-expression of NKG2A/NKp30 (upper panels) and NKG2A/NKp46 (lower panels) in NK-cell subsets from HCC, LC and HD. Horizontal lines represent median values. Differences between multiple groups were evaluated by the Kruskal–Wallis test; p values were corrected for pairwise multiple comparisons by the Dunn’s test