Skip to main content
. 2011 Sep 8;6(9):e24393. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0024393

Figure 1. Cytokine production in response to TLR ligands in PBMC cultures.

Figure 1

White and grey boxes correspond to S. haematobium-free and infected children respectively with the whiskers indicating minimal and maximal concentrations. * p<0.05; ** p<0.01. Panel A: At 24 h, the ‘innate’ time-point, infected children produced significantly more TNF-α in response to the TLR2/1 ligand Pam3CSK4 (Pam3) compared with uninfected children. TLR-mediated IL-10 production did not significantly deviate between infection groups. When innate cytokine responses faded at 72 h, similar trends were observed. These plots were not adjusted for spontaneous cytokine production. Panel B: At both time points, pro-inflammatory indices (i.e. cytokine ratio induced by one of the stimuli relative to the spontaneously produced ratio) induced by the TLR2 ligands, Pam3 and FSL-1, were significantly higher in infected versus uninfected children.