Fig. 3.

Association between inflammation degree or density of H. pylori and gastric infiltrating CD4⁺ CD25^high Treg frequency or gastric infiltrating CD4⁺ PD-1⁺ T cells in patients with H. pylori infection. Gastric infiltrating lymphocytes were divided into three groups based on inflammation degree (A and B). Significance of differences between inflammation degree and gastric infiltrating CD4⁺ CD25^high Treg frequency or gastric infiltrating CD4⁺ PD-1⁺ T cells was analyzed using nonparametric Mann-Whitney U tests. The correlation between density of H. pylori and gastric infiltrating CD4⁺ CD25^high Treg frequency (C) or gastric infiltrating CD4⁺ PD-1⁺ T-cell populations (D) was analyzed using Spearman correlation analysis. (E) Correlation of gastric infiltrating (GI)/peripheral blood (PB) T cells in patients with H. pylori infection. The correlation between density of H. pylori and histology scores for chronic inflammation (F) was also analyzed using Spearman correlation analysis. *, P < 0.05.