Figure 2.

Inbred murine strain phenotypes in response to systemic LPS challenge. (A) Kaplan-Meier survival curves for 11 strains challenged with LPS intraperitoneally (n = 16 for each strains). Two strains lacking functional TLR4 (C3H/HeJ and C57BL/6J^TLR4−/−) and one strain with functional TLR4 (NZW/LacJ) are completely unresponsive to systemic administration of LPS (100% survival 5 d after LPS). In addition, 75% of 129/SvIm and C57BL/6J mice survived for 5 days and are also considered resistant to LPS. The six other strains had less than 25% survival and were therefore sensitive to LPS challenge. Sensitive strains as a group (red lines) have significantly lower survival (P < 0.0001 by Mantel-Cox test) than Mut TLR4-resistant strains (blue lines) or WT TLR4-resistant strains (green lines). (B and C) Serum concentrations ± SEM of IL-6 (B) and TNF-α (C) from 11 murine strains challenged with LPS intraperitoneally (n = 8 for each strain). The cytokine concentrations (B and C) correlate with the sensitivity to LPS (A) in the majority of the strains examined (resistant strains depicted in green; sensitive strains in red).