Figure 2.

Monocyte apoptosis in VL patients cultured in vitro with or without specific antigen. Frozen PBMC from five VL patients, studied in acute and healed phases of disease, and from five healthy controls were cultured for 24 hr in medium alone and in the presence of LAg. Cells were stained with anti-CD14 mAb and PI and percentage of apoptotic cells among CD4⁺ evaluated by double staining. Histograms represent median values of the percentage of apoptotic monocytes among CD14⁺ cells. Healthy controls (white columns); acute VL patients (black columns); healed subjects (shaded columns). Significant differences between acute VL patients and other two groups are shown.