Figure 7.

 Frequency of YIDD+YVDD specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) was higher than that of YMDD specific CTLs in complete response (CR) patients. Total frequency of YMDD mutant (that is, YIDD+YVDD) tetramer stained CD8+ T cells after expansion using the modified CTL response index of the peptide (CRI-p) method from patient No 2 was compared with that of YMDD specific and hepatitis B core antigen (HBc 18–27) specific CTLs (A) three months after therapy. Before therapy, the frequency of YIDD was 2.9% (table 1 ▶) after in vitro expansion. Overall, CR patients had a significantly higher YIDD and YVDD specific CTL frequency than YMDD specific cells (B). ***p = 0.001, Mann-Whitney U test.