Fig. 4.
Effect of monocyte depletion on Lactobacillus casei Shirota (LcS)- and lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced cytokine production. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) or monocyte-depleted (MD)-PBMCs were incubated with live LcS at 106 colony-forming units (CFU)/ml or LPS at 1 µg/ml for 24 h. Increase of cytokine productions of interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-α, IL-12 and IL-10 in the supernatants of the cultures were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Data are shown as mean ± standard deviation of 6 to 14 subjects. *P < 0·05, **P < 0·01, ***P < 0·001 compared between PBMC and MD-PBMC cultures.