Fig. 3.
Effects of anti-IL-10 and anti-TGF-β antibodies on the anti-Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare complex (MAIC) activity of peritoneal macrophages of C57Bl/6 (BcgS) (a,c) and CBA/JN (Bcgr) (b,d) mice. The result shown is representative of three experiments separately carried out. Macrophages were infected with either high-virulence MAIC N-260 strain (a,b) or low-virulence MAIC N-254 strain (c,d) and cultured in the absence (○) or presence of 20 μg/ml each of anti-IL-10 antibody (•) or anti-TGF-β antibody (▴). ‘Growth index’ was calculated as: growth index = (intracellular colony-forming units (CFU) at day 3 or day 5)/(intracellular CFU at day 0). Each plot indicates the mean ± s.e.m. (n = 3) of the ‘Growth index’ value. The day 0 values for intracellular CFU residing in macrophages were: (a) 5.78 × 103/well; (b) 5.76 × 103/well; (c) 1.07 × 103/well; (d) 1.42 × 103/well. There was no significant difference in the bacterial loads between macrophages treated with each anti-cytokine antibody and untreated control macrophages. The recovery of bacterial CFU in culture fluids was < 10% of that recovered from macrophages.